It started off in engineering, then moved to architecture and is now taking hold in the garden design profession. What is it? Computer aided drawing (or drafting or design), otherwise known as CAD. At Pure Garden Design we’re committed to the use of CAD but there are some garden designers who seem to feel that using a computer to draw somehow results in an inferior end product.
I’m never sure why that is – after all, you never drew an entire plan using only freehand techniques but drew on a number of artificial tools and techniques which had to be learned before you could generate professional looking results. Scale rules, protractors, compasses and the dreaded smudgy Rotring pens all take a bit of getting used to and can be very frustrating at first.
Even with CAD the drawing board still has a place in the design studio – even when using pressure and tilt sensitive pens on graphics tablets is still hard to ‘doodle’ with the same freedom that you have with a soft pencil on a piece of tracing paper. But, and it’s a big but, as soon as that basic design starts to take shape the computer now offers the best solution for developing it from rough shapes into a client presentation drawing and then on to contractors drawings, planting plans and so on. There’s a massive productivity benefit to gained from the ability to make comprehensive revisions to a project for a 5 acre site and re-issue an entire suite of contractor’s drawings in only an hour or so, and this also translates into being able to be more flexible with our clients while remaining cost effective and keeping a lid on the design fee.
Some of the reluctance to adopting CAD probably comes from the fear of going from the known, familiar environment of the drawing board to the unfamiliar and potentially frustrating environment of the CAD system. This is where effective training and support is so important, which brings me to the point of writing this entry.
We’ve spent a fair proportion of July engaged in CAD tuition, both Vectorworks and Sketchup. It’s not a service that we publicise too heavily as the practice’s main focus is on garden design, but we do get asked to help people now and again. These are usually ‘word of mouth’ type referrals, and are often people who’ve done an expensive CAD course elsewhere then not sat in front of their PC for months, so when they do come back they’re completely flummoxed by the program. Our tuition always takes place on the client’s site and on their machine, preferably using a live project of theirs as an example so that the work we do is of immediate benefit to them.
We also offer a post tuition support service – if anyone gets stuck or (more usually) frustrated about doing something a long-winded way we can use a remote desktop service to work with them to solve the problem. Again this is more effective than just emailing files back and forth as we can work on the problem together and we can each follow every movement of the mouse and every click, rather than trying to decipher a page of ‘help’ text.
There’s no doubt that in the coming years the use of CAD in garden design will follow the same trend as in architecture practices – Sir Norman Foster and Frank Gehry still do pencil sketches of their buildings concepts, but I bet there aren’t many drawing boards to be seen in their offices!
This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 at 5:54 pm and is filed under Comment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
CAD in garden design
It started off in engineering, then moved to architecture and is now taking hold in the garden design profession. What is it? Computer aided drawing (or drafting or design), otherwise known as CAD. At Pure Garden Design we’re committed to the use of CAD but there are some garden designers who seem to feel that using a computer to draw somehow results in an inferior end product.
I’m never sure why that is – after all, you never drew an entire plan using only freehand techniques but drew on a number of artificial tools and techniques which had to be learned before you could generate professional looking results. Scale rules, protractors, compasses and the dreaded smudgy Rotring pens all take a bit of getting used to and can be very frustrating at first.
Even with CAD the drawing board still has a place in the design studio – even when using pressure and tilt sensitive pens on graphics tablets is still hard to ‘doodle’ with the same freedom that you have with a soft pencil on a piece of tracing paper. But, and it’s a big but, as soon as that basic design starts to take shape the computer now offers the best solution for developing it from rough shapes into a client presentation drawing and then on to contractors drawings, planting plans and so on. There’s a massive productivity benefit to gained from the ability to make comprehensive revisions to a project for a 5 acre site and re-issue an entire suite of contractor’s drawings in only an hour or so, and this also translates into being able to be more flexible with our clients while remaining cost effective and keeping a lid on the design fee.
Some of the reluctance to adopting CAD probably comes from the fear of going from the known, familiar environment of the drawing board to the unfamiliar and potentially frustrating environment of the CAD system. This is where effective training and support is so important, which brings me to the point of writing this entry.
We’ve spent a fair proportion of July engaged in CAD tuition, both Vectorworks and Sketchup. It’s not a service that we publicise too heavily as the practice’s main focus is on garden design, but we do get asked to help people now and again. These are usually ‘word of mouth’ type referrals, and are often people who’ve done an expensive CAD course elsewhere then not sat in front of their PC for months, so when they do come back they’re completely flummoxed by the program. Our tuition always takes place on the client’s site and on their machine, preferably using a live project of theirs as an example so that the work we do is of immediate benefit to them.
We also offer a post tuition support service – if anyone gets stuck or (more usually) frustrated about doing something a long-winded way we can use a remote desktop service to work with them to solve the problem. Again this is more effective than just emailing files back and forth as we can work on the problem together and we can each follow every movement of the mouse and every click, rather than trying to decipher a page of ‘help’ text.
There’s no doubt that in the coming years the use of CAD in garden design will follow the same trend as in architecture practices – Sir Norman Foster and Frank Gehry still do pencil sketches of their buildings concepts, but I bet there aren’t many drawing boards to be seen in their offices!
This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 at 5:54 pm and is filed under Comment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.