What’s new in Lands Design

Lands Design 5

5.7 (July 2022)
5.6 (December 2021)
5.5 (June 2021)
5.4 (February 2021)
5.3 (October 2020)
5.2 (July 2020)
5.1(May 2020)
5.0 (March 2020)

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