FEATURE “it's really good, even if you do a simple online course. There are plenty available both online, in person or as simple as YouTube – the possibilities of it are endless.” Owner of training provider SketchUp for Garden Design, John Brooks, has been designing gardens for over 20 years and has been developing his self-taught software skills throughout his career. Soon realising that the THE LANDSCAPE SERVICE available teaching and training for such software is limited within the industry and not necessarily touched upon in enough detail Self-taught and eager to contribute to his throughout colleges, Brooks set up his training community, Brooks assures that “once you scheme in 2017 and now teaches people all know how to use it properly, you can create over the world, from Canada to the US to pretty much anything”. Brooks confirms that Australia, on top of a collection of online and “it's like any programme when people first in-person students across the UK. open it; they get a bit daunted because With 85% of all students there are lots of buttons, it’s not participating in one-to-one clear what they will do, and sessions online via also people probably Zoom, Brooks allows aren't used to his students to have working in a 3D maximum environment. But flexibility whilst if you start with also teaming up selectors and give with companies yourself some such as London time to get used Stone to provide to it, you’ll be group sessions to flying in no time.” upcoming garden Broken down Marketa Hermova, landscape industry specialist, designers. Brooks has into different levels Vectorworks built his career with the of complexity, the design software SketchUp, foundation course teaches a software development for a wide the basics such as the simple range of users but with the ability to be drawing and selecting tools, how to create a manipulated to suit different industries. new template, and an introduction to shaping “SketchUp was set up in the early 2000s in 3D.“It’s very much centred on the student and is this generic piece of design software using the software; it's not me sitting there which is actually used in all sorts of different playing around and showing people what industries...it's not specific for garden design in I can do. I provide a lot of exercises as I go the way that Vectorworks is, for example.” through the courses, to get them used to
Technology is changing and evolving all the time, especially with the introduction of AI which we can see is beginning to be quite helpful and will only get better in the future
VECTORWORKS: LANDMARK COLOR PALETTE
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Pro Landscaper | January 2024
using whatever is relevant to them working as garden designers.” These practices are reflected in the intermediate course, which explores the day-to-day stuff working in the garden designing using SketchUp, dealing with surveys, using AutoCAD files, or Vectorworks files, which they can then send into SketchUp and start working with it from that point. Although the base software has developed since its initial release, the main updates now come from coded extensions and additional add on programmes which you can download online and “really make SketchUp quite powerful,” says Brooks. For example, the ability to change the automatic orientation of the layout so that the garden is correctly replicated, rotating the positioning to ensure that North and South are in the realistic positionings and therefore shadows will be accurately presented. Like Mills and Smith, Brooks has also discovered the benefits of combining design programs, using SketchUp in conjunction with V-Ray for rendering due to its in depth understanding of how light behaves on different surfaces when uploading designs. He also sees the benefit of using VR, such as in BBC Two’s Your Garden Made Perfect, on which VR goggles are used to showcase the designs to the client. “It means you can effectively go to your garden before it actually exists. And you can do it using SketchUp; however, you would need very past processing computers, and all the equipment.” VR is a more likely trend to catch on than AI in design, reckons Brooks, who says the images produced by AI would need to be very detailed to create something that a garden designer can. “Lots of people are scared that AI is going to replace the job that we do as designers, but at the moment, I would say that's not something to worry about, because AI is not at a point yet where it's going to be able to create designs that are specific to the individual client.” Either way, design software is likely to continue to develop as it has done over the years, offering shortcuts and acting as a tool for designers, rather than replacing them altogether.
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