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Version History

GardenCAD is user driven software. The demand for it came from landscape students who found learning conventional command driven CAD software tools such as AutoCAD and IntelliCAD much too difficult. Landscape designers wanted an easy-to-use software tool which mimicked as far as possible the way in which landscape plans are produced by hand. Every effort has been made to create a program with those characteristics. GardenCAD is 'mouse driven' with options selected from menus which pop up at left and right mouse clicks, depending what is selected. We have made the interface as clean and uncluttered as possible and provided a complete set of pre-drawn landscape symbols for you to use. You can of course create your own.
 
As each new version of GardenCAD emerges, it contains new features. The development and addition of features is driven by feedback from users. Please add your contribution by requesting a feature.
 
Version history:
The first version of GardenCAD was released in 2006.
GardenCAD v1.5 followed in 2007
GardenCAD Pro v1.7 2008
GardenCAD Pro v1.8 2009
GardenCAD Pro v2.0 2010

Contact: info@gardencad.net for more information or to add your comments. We welcome suggestions for improvements to GardenCAD. Suggestions we have received thus far are given below - it's the wish list for future versions!

Next release of GardenCAD (planned early 2011)

  • We will pre load a wide selection of linetypes - dot dash, log dash etc. thus avoiding the need to load a set of linetypes at every GardenCAD session.
  • We will add control to the POINTSTYLES command and set a standard point marker of appropriate size for setouts.
  • A number of new text styles will be added. These will concentrate on hand lettered fonts.

Style 1 Style 1

We will create several in-built hand lettered styles to choose from instead of requiring you to make then.

  • An in-built explanation of special techniques such as scaling at approved scale factors [1:2, 1:5, 1:10, 1:20, 1:50, 1:100, 1:200, 1:500 etc. when creating views on pages sheets will be added.
  • A pre-set of layers will be created and available in a new drawing. L-SITE-ANALYSIS, L-SITE-CONCEPT, l_SITE-BOUNDARY, L-DIMENSIONS, L-IRRIG, L-SERVICES etc.
  • A major change will be made to the plant symbol selector. A much larger snapshot of the intended symbol will be available before insertion. The figure below shows our steel selector in a companion program (dCAD); the GardenCAD selector will be similar. It will have the added benefit that you will be able to add your own symbols to the library.

Selector

  • Several dimension styles will be created and pre-set in the default drawing. These will be suitable for different plot scales.
  • An explantion of the use of the various entity snaps will be built in.
  • More explanation about the best way to do hatching.
  • A tool to output a drawing to a DXF file for importaion into AutoCAD, IntelliCAD and SketchUp will be implemented.
  • A tool to enable entities to be tagged and selectively displayed as in GIS software will be implemented.
  • A new set of test drawings will replace the original set.