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rob leblanc

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  1. Tvetter,your bring up some great points. I would like to present my 2 cents worth. I think there is some commonality in the way that landscape architects create planting plans. Most start by selecting an appropriate plant list for every project. They don't start by selecting symbols. The advantage of starting with the plant list in CAD is that it cuts the database down from thousands of plants to a manageable list. Once you have a list, its easier to assign a symbol to each plant. In an ideal world, a plant table would be presented with a drop down menu of plant symbols that could be assigned to each plant (once the symbol has been used, it gets eliminated from the symbol database). Then, you should be able to drag the plant (or symbol) into the drawing; or use the place plant tool with a simpler way of selecting a plant. When placing a plant, it should be a one step process to select the desired plant and place it on the drawing. Other thoughts?
  2. I have had a few crashes. I haven't used it on an actual project because it takes too long to go through the process (I was hoping to migrate from LandCADD but that won't be happening yet). The new effects are definately a step up over v10/10.5 but in my case, stability and speed is still an issue. Placing plant labels feels very sluggish. I would be interested in hearing what the Mac users think (I've only got a license for a PC but we have lots of Macs at the office).
  3. Some of the new features are very promising in v11. Notably the road design improvements(that creates curve data and road profiles automatically from a polyline), the viewports (we can now chat with Autocad compatriots very easily) and the new visual effects in the planting module (sketchy effects and most importantly, the heavier line around plant groups). In my last week of use, I have discovered that many of the old 'annoyances' remain. The DTM module is still way too finicky. I have had mixed results creating a DTM from autocad generated polygons. It does not work well with alot of points (in my case a few thousand) and I keep getting strange errors in the DTM module. What really bugs me though is the process for creating a planting plan. Instead of starting with a plant list (created by the user) and assigning a symbol to a plant from the list , VW forces you to start with symbols and assign plants to them. I find the procedure takes me roughly double the time from LandCad and I think it could be improved by allowing users to select a shortlist of plants from the database first. Worse yet, I have not found an easy way to import a plant list (with symbols) into a new project; forcing you to go through this awkward process over and over for every project. I have had strange crashes using the planting module and I have had no luck creating my own plant symbols (admittadly, there is some process for doing this but it's not well documented). When you go to drop a plant, a symbol with some code comes up and unless you have a really good memory you have to do some digging to find out which plant you've assigned to the symbol before you can plant something. The whole process is very convuluted and time consuming and needs a major overhaul. This said, I think if VW could improve the plant design process (1. start by allowing the user to select plants for the job from the database; 2. assign a symbol to each plant in the user defined list; and 3. easily allow users to drag and drop plants from a floating palette or drop down menu) and the DTM creation module (too buggy to be usable), they would have a winner. Let's hope 11.5 makes these improvements. All in all I am very pleased with the version 11 improvements.
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