Trees & Shrubs

Since you don't have any comments under Trees & Shrubs, I'll give you a few:

1. It would be nice to have some fractal versions of symbols. (I don't know if you remember "That Tree Program," a little program that ran on the old Mac Plus and created trees as fractals -- it was cool because trees could be quickly drawn using just a few lines that were then propagated using fractal techniques. However it was mostly useful for elevations, and a similar tool for plan views would be nice.)

2. Landscape architects seem to like a lot of "noise" in their drawings -- some tools sort of like the squiggle line tool, but to provide noise.

3. When I place tree or bush symbols, I'd like to be able to immediately rotate and scale them. I can rotate them with PowerCADD, but it would be nice to have a tool that made this process faster and simpler.

I would suggest a tool sort of like the door tool for the tree symbols (plan view), rather than picking things from the symbol libraries. It would be nice to have various tree categories (conifers, palms, etc.) sort of like the door categories (sliding, swinging, pocket, etc.), and then just draw a diagonal as though drawing a circle to automatically set the rotation and diameter.

Just like you have the single and double-door option, it would be nice to have a single and double shape for the tree symbols, since some landscape architects like to draw a second shape just slightly offset from, but overlapping, the first object. (The offset will be at various angles from the original to give it a more organic look.) [Unable to display image]

Some landscape architects like to show a center point for the object (makes it easier to measure the precise location in the landscape), while others don't.

4. Landscape architects need a tool that floods an area with bricks, paver patterns, even with groundcover plant patterns. It would probably be nice if this created a "paint" object rather than vectors, so people could selectively erase things if desired. It might be best if multiple uses of this tool created multiple paint objects, rather than modifying an existing object, although it would also be nice to be able to merge two paint objects together.

Obviously, it would be nice to be able to create one's own flood pattern in any size. One problem with doing this is that good repeating patterns take too much effort to create. It isn't that we can't draw a herringbone or whatever, its that figuring out where to begin and end the pattern within the confines of the shape provided for hatches is difficult to do. It would be
much easier to draw the pattern using vectors, then draw a box around the appropriate repeating section, cut everything outside the box (and the box), and have what is left turned into the flood pattern (any rectangular shape -- and hexagonal shapes too).

And if I scan something in with my scanner, I'd like to be able to turn it into a pattern. In this case, I'll probably end up with edges that make grass look mowed or checked patterns of water in a swimming pool. So I need to be able to move the pattern in a paint window so that I have the corners in the middle, so I can edit the pattern in whatever way necessary to minimize this checking appearance. I don't know why the paint packages don't provide features to do this sort of thing easily.

5. You might also consider offering something like the cloud tool, but with shapes other than the double circles. The problem with this is that you usually want to end up with a shape that is somewhat circular, and this would be trickier to do with the cloud tool than with a tool that you just drew a diameter for a particular pattern.

Ann Meyer

Comments, please.

Alfred Scott