Lettters and Words

Lettters and Words July 18, 2007 Dear Tim, This newsletter will be shorter than others. A few words and letters, I hope, will do the trick this time. No doubt you've been busy too. Hey, I'm a MOM! Well, I AM a dad, but I'm also APLD's Member of the Month. Take a look and let me know what you think. I'd be interested in your comments on my editorial (rant?) there. CAD Convert Well, this year working at the Schmechtig Landscape Company, I have had the opportunity to learn AutoCad . I've known for a long time that CAD was the way to go, but just hadn't made the commitment. That said, I'm not sure Autocad is the best tool for landscape design. Basically, it's a drawing tool. You still have to do your takeoffs and such in a separate step. It would be nice if objects, or "blocks" had attributes. That is, if you place an evergreen tree on a plan, it would be nice if that tree was a specific tree. My understanding is that Dynascape and Vectorworks deal with that issue, and that Vectorworks is 3D. There are others out there as well. If anyone out there has experience with any of the various CAD applications out there, please speak up. If I can come up with a reasonable comparison among various options, I'll gladly share it. Also, I participated in an online demo of Google's Sketchup. Wow. If anyone out there would like to share any experience with this really amazing product, please do so. Incidentally, the drawing pictured here is a hand rendering I did a couple years ago for Chicagoland Gardening Magazine. There have been a number of inquiries about what CAD program we use in courses we teach. It's important to understand that CAD is merely a tool. Like a pencil. "Garbage in, garbage out," the saying goes. You still need to design well, regardless of the drafting tool. "It's not the wand, it's the magician." The logistics of teaching design workshops are such that computers would get in the way. If you don't think your graphics are up to snuff, no big deal, at least for what we are teaching. If you want to learn graphics, there are plenty of options out there, including Mike Lin's Graphic Workshop, one of Richard Scott's programs, as well as "one-off" programs such as those taught by Greg Pierceall or Stephen Marzahl. No One Asked Me Technology is amazing. I now get my news wirelessly. In fact, all I have to do is walk to the end of my driveway in the morning to collect a printout from my wireless information provider. It's packaged in a protective polyethylene pouch and held tight by a variable tension gripper. Amazing. I've always liked words. In fact, I began college at Duke as an English major. When I realized everyone around me was pre-law, of course, I had to make a change! The writing process is just like any other design process. Maybe I'll Blog this topic some time. Anyway, here is a link to a recent posting that has to do with words as we use them in our industry. Enjoy the rest of your summer! Okay...it started out to be short, but to paraphrase Mark Twain, "I would have written less, but I didn't have time." Sincerely, Tim Thoelecke American Academy of Landscape Design email: info@aaldweb.com phone: 847-657-7900 web: http://www.aaldweb.com