3D Landscape

By Sandra Medlock

3D Landscape is a product from Books That Work, a company with a growing line of how-to software products. 3D Landscape consists of an electronic how-to guide and the Landscape Designer. The guide is an electronic book that provides practical information on planning your landscape. The Designer lets you create your landscape based on the information gleaned from the guide.

3D Landscape electronic guide.

I love to plan and design things, even if they never come to fruition, so I thought reviewing 3D Landscape would be a natural fit with my personality. As I opened the electronic guide, the first item I found was a beautifully designed small back yard with a brick patio, deck, and sheltering trees. Just the thing, I thought, for our garden-plot yard. Double clicking on the photograph took me to a three-dimensional rendering of the yard. I adjusted the slope to more closely match our yard, looked at the design from different camera angles and zoomed in for a closer look at the little meditation pond. The 3-D rendering and redrawing was accomplished quickly on my 486 DX/2 66 MHz workstation (8 MB RAM).

Just out of curiousity I clicked on the materials estimate button. Ouch!! Nearly $13,000 for the ground cover alone for a 1300 square foot plot. An estimated $5500 for the brick patio. I quit wandering through the estimates and returned to the guide; looking for less ambitious ideas. I found myself clicking on item after item, learning how to plan, design, and purchase items for landcaping. The gallery of ideas were probably too ambitious for someone with small tract home in dry South Texas, but they were beautifully presented. Hints, tips, and color photographs supplemented the text of the guide. Easy to understand command buttons let you backtrack or jump to other chapters.

Be forewarned: some chapters contain ads for landscape-related companies. I was surprised to see these included in the guide. Whereas Internet-surfers are used to seeing sponsors' ads on home pages, I found it surprising in a purchased software program. The electronic guide not only instructs you on choosing the best type of plants for your yard, you'll also receive instructions on building backyard projects, such as patios, fences, and retaining walls. You can make a printout of any topic.

Designer Tool

The landscape designer tool is a kick to use. If you're comfortable with using the tools in other drawing programs, you get the hang of using the designer in a few minutes. If you haven't used a drawing program, drawing and stretching items with the mouse can be accomplished with a little practice. You can also access a tutorial from the online help menu which can guide you through the landscape design. As you plot the yard, house, and driveway, you can add items to your design by clicking the appropriate item from a broad collection of tools or by dragging and dropping the item on your plan. You can add bushes, trees, utility items, outdoor furniture, ground cover, and more. At any time you click an item and delete it, or select and delete all the items in the drawing area to clear it. Items can also be locked so that they can't be modified or deleted.

After you plan your landscape, click on a special tool to see how those trees and bushes will look in five or ten years. This tool will help you see if bushes or trees or planted too close to the house. Another interesting tool is the shadow caster. Since our new house will have a western exposure, I wanted to see if the trees I planned for the front yard would offer afternoon shading. I clicked on the all day shadow caster tool which renders the shadows in fifteen minute increments from sunrise (with the sound of a rooster crowing) to sunset (the sound of an owl hooting). Imagine my horror when I realized that the house itself would cast an all-day shadow on my planned vegetable garden! I could also see that the house would shadow the proposed patio/deck, offering protection for late afternoon barbecues and picnics.

Summary

3D Landscape includes a handy user's manual which is easy to understand. It offers step-by-step instructions for using the software and planning your own landscaping project. While I have always enjoyed reading how-to books, I've discovered a new joy in exploring multimedia books on CD-ROM. The Books That Work software was easy to use and informative, and the 3D rendering was efficient and fast. I look forward to other titles in the Books That Work series. 3D Landscape is available on floppy diskette or CD-ROM. The floppy diskette requires 15 megabytes of free space on the hard drive. The CD-ROM version requires 5 megabytes. The minimum hardware requirements for the program is 4 MB RAM, Windows 3.1, a monitor with 256 color display, and free hard drive space as indicated above.

When you install the CD version, the installation programs installs Microsoft's Multimedia Viewer Version 2.0 on your hard drive with DLLs installed at the Windows system directory. The WIN.ini file is modified and a viewer.ini file is created. The Viewer can be used with other multimedia products. Books That Work can be found in major software retail stores; its list price is $49.95. The sales and service department can be reached at 1-800-242-4546. The Books That Work technical support number is 1-415-843-4440. Their bulletin board is available at 1-415-812-9701, where you can post technical support questions and participate in the Builders' Forum, where home repair and home improvement issues are discussed. Books that work is on the World Wide Web at http://www.gardening.com. Their site contains extracts from 3D Landscape, including a lawn grass selector.