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