What’s new in Lands Design

Lands Design 5

Lands Design 5.8 (February 2023)

New features

  • Lists
    • Filter contents by Region
    • Filter contents by Layer
    • New Layer column (optional)
    • New Object type column in Plant List (optional)
  • Purge from Lands Edit Panel
    • Unused Species
    • Unused Urban furniture products
  • Animations
    • Option to play the AVI file or open the containing folder once the animation rendering is completed
  • Realistic plant libray
    • 60+ existing files replaced by better versions in .ArTree format
    • 7 new files
  • AutoCAD
    • 12 stone blocks 2D/3D added to the Library
    • Render ArTree files in nXtRender
    • Improved rendering of very detailed plants in Mental Ray (the built-in render engine)
    • Sun animation in Mental Ray and during the Animation preview
  • Rhino
    • Raytraced display mode support
    • Generate very detailed plants for ViewCaptureToFile and ViewCaptureToClipboard

Notes

  • These are the required Rhino and AutoCAD versions to install Lands Design 5.8:
    • Rhino 7 SR 23 or later
    • Rhino 6 SR 35 or later
    • AutoCAD 2015-2023

Lands Design 5.7 (July 2022)

New features

  • Display speed
    • Faster 2D drawing code
    • Reduced the amount of geometry in the viewport
      • Optimized 2D plant crown files
      • Way lighter realistic plants
    • New billboard mode combining the 3D plant representation in front views, and the Billboard representation in top views
  • File open/save
    • Reduced 3dm file size
    • Faster conversion from previous Lands Design versions
    • Faster and more reliable regeneration of missing texture files
    • Automatic replacement of deprecated realistic files
  • Plant generation
    • Faster insertion of species from the database into a document
    • Faster plant 3D display switch
    • Faster document season change
    • Faster generation of very detailed plants for the render
    • Customizable level of detail
      • Up to 4 levels in the viewport
      • 2 quality options for the render: Good and Final
  • Avoid hangs
    • Improved materials management to avoid overheads due to a large number of them
    • Progress bar on tasks taking more than a few seconds
  • Realistic Plant Library
    • 50+ new ArTree files
    • 40+ ArPlantX files replaced by better versions in ArTree format
  • Other
    • Improved texture mapping in Walls, Paths and Stairs
    • Export list dialog shows now the icons, and can export icons for all kind of lists
    • Plant Database fields translated to Japanese

Notes

  • These are the required Rhino and AutoCAD versions to install Lands Design 5.7:
    • Rhino 7 SR 13 or later
    • Rhino 6 SR 34 or later
    • AutoCAD 2015-2023

Lands Design 5.6 (December 2021)

New features

  • Plant Database
    • 6000+ new species records
    • Enhanced database format
    • More consistent field values
    • New fields: Duration, Synonyms…
    • Multi language support
    • 40+ new realistic display files and 90+ replaced files with better versions
    • 40+ new 2D crown files
    • Smarter 2D crown and 3D realistic default file assignment based on species name, binomial and genus
    • Improved search filters
    • Enable/show only those values applicable to the current species list
    • Hightlight active filters
    • Remove all filters at once
    • Now you can list Customized species and Added species, as well as species With picture
    • Species properties dialog
    • Realistic file assignment for groundcovers and topiaries
    • Elevation file assignment
    • Easier Picture assignment/removal
    • Edit fields in any language regardless the current Lands language
    • Next/previous navigation even in Edit mode. Rollback all changes if the user cancels
    • Option to restore the factory data of Customized species
    • Option to restore the whole database
    • Option to import a Plant Database file from other computers and/or from older versions
    • Export to CSV
  • Urban Furniture library
    • Categories reorganization
    • 70+ new blocks
      • Benches
      • Bins
      • Bollards
      • Fountains
      • Lighting
    • Improvements and fixes on existing blocks
  • Grasshopper components
    • Pipe object
    • Row object
    • Object Parameters support
    • Grasshopper Player support
  • IFC Support
    • Import/export IFC files
    • Import/export Lands Terrains as IFC Site elements
    • Export Lands objects as IFC Custom elements
  • Japanese language

Notes

  • Minor UI improvements and bug fixes
  • These are the required Rhino versions to install Lands Design 5.6:
    • Rhino 6 SR 34 or later
    • Rhino 7 SR 9 or later
  • Compatible with VisualARQ 2.12

Lands Design 5.5 (June 2021)

New features

  • Earth Terrain Importer
    • Import 3D buildings
    • Use Mapbox elevation data as alternative (at user choice) to JAXA elevation data
  • New Topiary object. You can:
    • Create it from a selected Species and an existing shape (surface, mesh…)
    • Modify its parameters (density, leaf scale, 2D display…)
    • Get it automatically listed in Plant Lists
    • Label it as with plants
    • Insert a Plant photo next to it…
  • Edit Panel selection tree
    • Species subnodes for Plant specimens, Groundcover specimens, Topiary specimens, Vertical Garden…
    • Multi select: now you can select multiple nodes
  • Plant Database
    • Added Flower color and Flower season to filters
    • Interactive Climate Map
  • Other
    • Forests can now be created from surfaces, regions, hatches and zones in addition to curves
    • Objects of the wrong type are now ignored when user is prompted to select an objects
    • Removed Lands Scheme when launching Rhino from the Lands Design desktop icon

Notes

  • Compatible with VisualARQ 2.11
  • API (WIP) for RhinoCommon developers (C# and Python)

Lands Design 5.4 (February 2021)

New features

  • License:
    • Lands Design Zoo Plugin available for Zoo 7
  • Plants:
    • Plant from Block command to replace existing block instances by Lands plants (video)
    • Better default block assignment for 2D crown and 3D conceptual and detailed display
    • Now you can change the Groundcover’s conceptual, detailed, and elevation display
  • Plant Database:
    • 11 new realistic plant files added and 79 plant files replaced by better versions of the species
    • Option to collapse the image’s area in Plant Database
    • Improved preview and thumbnail images
  • Object: Library:
    • Option to chose whether to insert Library blocks as urban furniture or not
  • Object: Path:
    • Default rectangular parametric profile on Paths
  • Other:
    • Improved z-order of Zones, Texts, Plant shadows, and Plant crowns
    • Better filtering of invalid objects during object selection

Notes

  • Minor UI improvements and bug fixes
  • These are the required Rhino versions to install Lands Design 5.4:
    • Rhino 6 SR 14 or later
    • Rhino 7 SR 2 or later
  • Compatible with VisualARQ 2.10

Lands Design 5.3 (October 2020)

New features

  • Installer:
    • Rhino 7 support
  • Terrains:
    • Cut and fills, holes and paths can now produce sharp edges even when the gridded surface is used
    • Divisions are now highlighted in the viewport when they are selected on the Lands Edit Panel
    • Osnaps enabled for Vertex option instead of End
  • Plant Database:
    • Added Australian species
    • Added 60+ realistic plant files
    • Better climate zones classification
  • Grasshopper components:
    • New Lands Design Pipeline component
  • Object: Library:
    • Urban Furniture objects have now properties
  • Object: Sprinkler:
    • Now you can edit the size of the Sprinkler symbol

Notes

  • Minor UI improvements and bug fixes
  • These are the required Rhino versions to install Lands Design 5.3:
    • Rhino 6 SR 14 or later
    • Rhino 7 BETA (version 7.0.20295.18003 (21/10/2020) or later
  • Compatible with VisualARQ 2.9

Lands Design 5.2 (July 2020)

  • _laEarthScan can now be run silently through scripts
  • Preview images on Species selection combo box
  • Added more realistic plants
  • New group filter in Plant Database to select plants suitable for Vertical Garden
  • Terrains: elevation data control points are now disabled by default if they exceed 100
  • Very detailed plants are now generated when using Twinmotion as well as Enscape
  • Fixed a crash on laPlantLabel command when language was set to Chinese
  • Other minor bug fixes

Lands Design 5.1 (May 2020)

  • AutoCAD 2021 support
  • Cloud Zoo support
  • Added Czech language
  • Improved laEarthScan command: better satellite image resolution; now you can do a window selection of the area to import
  • 32-bit TIFF images support in DEM Import command
  • Minor improvements and bug fixes

Lands Design 5.0 for AutoCAD (March 2020)

  • Satellital images from MapBox when importing with the redesigned Earth elevation data command.
  • New Slope marker object.
  • Automatic Terrain divisions for cut&fill and paths.
  • Now you can use a tilted curve to create a cut&fill.
  • In Top views, vegetation objects are now ordered based on its height.
  • Now in Plant Photo you can select any photo from your hard drive.
  • Hatches in Shrubs, Groundcovers, zones… are now optional.
  • Zoning from Terrain divisions
  • New list of Terrain volumes and areas
  • AutoCAD materials can now be assigned to Terrain divisions, as well as materials from any renderer
  • Urban Furniture’s 2D block can now be automatically generated from the 3D block
  • Better fit of Fence components
  • New commands to extract/reverse curves from Lands objects
  • Search function in the Urban Furniture Library.
  • Improved performance.
  • Bug fixes