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Today much is being said in the world of architecture with regards to BIM, its philosophy, its advantages, its present and future. But from among these voices, a whisper has become audible: LIM.

This article explains what LIM is and how it relates to Lands.

Content

The BIM concept applied to landscape architecture

In recent years, the BIM concept has been a breakthrough in architecture comparable to CAD when it first came out. If Computer Aided Design (CAD) allowed architects to take the leap from pen and paper to the computer screen, with the advantages of precision and the ability to edit, the Building Information Modeling (BIM) represents a new qualitative leap, going from simple computer drawing lines, arcs, and hatches to the creation and modification of real architectural objects. The architect no longer manages drawings and blueprints without semantic content, but rather a complete computer model of the building that can extract all the information needed for its construction.

BIM is both a concept and a new generation of software with the sufficient intelligence to support the concept. Essentially, the BIM concept consists in the use of intelligent software capable of interpreting information that the professional may attach to a model for its future extraction, whatever the model type. This allows it to be successfully applied to other fields beyond building construction: Landscaping (1).

LIM is to landscape architecture what BIM is to architecture. LIM allows modeling the landscape information by managing interrelated landscape objects in the computer and obtaining what can be considered as a landscape database that various other professionals may consult and / or modify, thus obtaining, and without additional effort, the following: site plans, sections and elevations, lists, animations, photorealistic images, and much more.

LIM: Modeling the landscape information

With the LIM software, the professional landscape architect will cease to use the computer to create the lines, plots, symbols and dimensions of the technical drawing he or she needs to present to his or her client; he or she will cease to add three-dimensional objects manually in order to provide a perspective view; he or she will cease to redraw the landscape shapes when creating an elevation; or to manually tabulate the objects in the drawing to provide the plant lists for the site plan. Instead, the landscape architect will have tools to facilitate the incorporation of hedges and rows of plants, sprinklers and pipes, fences and paths, terrain, stairs, parterres, etc. The landscape architect will not insert a 2-D plant symbol in a 2-D plan, and a 3-D plant symbol in an elevation drawing. The landscape architect will insert a plant in the landscape.

The landscape objects can be single or batch edited, one of its properties can be edited while keeping the rest, they can be replaced by other objects while keeping the relationship with other landscape elements, and they can be quantified, analyzed and displayed in many forms. The objects can interact, to facilitate the work. For example, if the landscaping project is to be executed on an irregular terrain, the software will automatically calculate the elevation of the plants, fences or paths to conform to the terrain elevation.

The LIM model of the landscape may contain topographic information of the site and other details, such as the display mode of the plants in the nursery. This information can be completed by any of the professionals participating in the project, doing so by modifying a single file. The modifications introduced will not require additional work by any of the other professionals, thus avoiding errors due to last minute changes or poor coordination.

The landscape information shall include the following:

Advantages of LIM

The workflow advantages of the LIM tools for the professional landscape architect are the same as the BIM advantages for the architect, since the same work philosophy is entailed. These advantages are:

LIM features of Lands

Lands is a software product that integrates the LIM concept in its workflow. Lands is based on the LIM concept to provide added value to its platform: AutoCAD.

The Lands features which make it a powerful LIM application are as follows:

Smart landscape object creation
The objects created with Lands, such as plants, hedges, paths, stairs, walls, fences, terrain, etc. contain additional information to the geometric object visible in the drawing which allows the Lands user to edit its properties, relate them with one another, etc. In addition, Lands is able to update the objects automatically when changes to the design require it.

Simultaneous 2-D, 3-D and… 4-D design!
2-D drawings, setting out or watering plans, 3-D perspectives and even photo-realistic images and virtual tours can be extracted from the drawings created with Lands. All this from a single DWG file which is used as a LIM database.
And in addition, Lands allows a fourth dimension: time. Lands displays the project in various phases of vegetation growth, simulate changes incurred in the seasonal cycle, and study the effects of the sun path and the shadows over the landscape…

Automatic documentation
Plant lists, zoning, sprinklers and pipes, plant tags and dimensioning information are examples of the type of documentation that Lands can extract from the drawing. In addition, Lands automatically updates this information when changes in the model are made.

Terrain generation from real data
Lands provides tools for true topographical data from Google Earth. Terrain is generated from this data, where you can apply cuts and fills, holes, etc. Lands can calculate the volume of earthwork for these operations.
The user will not need to manually adjust the landscape elements to the terrain. Lands will do it automatically. When the user modifies the input topographical data, Lands will generate the new terrain, readjust the elevation of the elements and recalculate the earthworks.

Plant database associated to the plants in the drawing
The user will have a database of over 1,800 plants available to assist in creating the plants of the drawing. And once created, the database will provide files with the features and morphology of the plants used in the project.

Related links

(1) Landscape Information Modelling Marc Goldman

The second edition of the universitary expert course Gardening and Landscaping: Mediterranean Climate Gardens organized by the Technical College of Agricultural Engineering from the University of Sevilla includes the use of Lands Studio software in the syllabus.

> More information

Lands users can now download a new free update. SR1 is a major update which includes new features and enhancements, and fixes all known bugs.

New in SR1:

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This new version is free and it can be downloaded from Lands. When Lands detects a new update, a warning is shown to the user with a link to the download page. For more details about this process, see the online help.

The use of 64-bit operative systems has become widespread in the last few months.

Autodesk, which offers 64-bit versions of AutoCAD since 2008 edition, does not allow to install 32-bit versions of AutoCAD on 64-bit operative systems if the corresponding 64-bit version of AutoCAD exists.

This means that AutoCAD users who work on a 64-bit operative system will need 64-bit versions of their plug-ins, since the old plug-ins only load on 32-bit versions of AutoCAD.

This is why Asuni CAD has made the effort to adapt Lands to 64-bit operative systems:

32 and 64-bit versions of Lands are now available for download.

The best way to show a landscaping project is using a virtual tour or interactive walk-through.

In order to offer this feature, we are working on a new tool to create animations from the camera movement, the sun, etc. You will be able to see the animation in real time and render it with AutoCAD’s renderer or with AccuRender nXt.

This tool will be included in the next Lands update. If you are already a Lands user, you will get it at no additional cost.

After releasing Lands Service Release 1 in five user interface languages (Spanish, English, French, Italian, and German), you can now see the website and blog in any of these languages.

You can choose the language from the dropdown “Language" menu:

For those Lands users who miss the render possibilities that offers ARQ Landscape, now Lands supports AccuRender nXt!

If you install nXt (there is a free evaluation version available) you will be able to use both applications together, Lands plants and parterres will be rendered with nXt plant generation technology, which can also be used for the plant 3D display on the drawing.

You will also be able to apply nXt materials to Lands structural elements, such stairs, dwarf walls, paths or terrains, and obtain photoreal images. AccuRender nXt considerably improves  the render core with respect to AccuRender 4, and generates images with much better quality in materials and lighting.

To learn more about Lands-nXt, visit Lands website and go to AccuRender nXt in the Plug-ins section. You will also find demo videos under Videos in the Gallery section.

You can download AccuRender nXt from the product official website: http://nxt.accurender.com