FAQs

General

What kind of program is Lands Design?
Lands Design is software for designing landscape, green spaces, forest and gardens that runs in the Rhino and AutoCAD environment. Lands Design provides tools for producing 2D and 3D technical drawings of green spaces, as well as realistic images and virtual tours of the project.
Is Lands Design a BIM software?
Yes, it is. Lands Design works with BIM technology. It provides tools for working with smart objects, such as 3D plants or civil work objects, that can be edited parametrically. It gives the ability on working in 2D drawing and 3D model at the same time. You can generate automatic quantity takeoff for listing the information of vegetation specimens, volume of land movement, urban furniture objects, sprinklers, areas, and more… Lands Design also provides tools for seasonal presentation of the plants and visualization of plant grow all are part of this attribute of Lands Design. However, the rewards of working in a BIM environment eases the collaboration in the Project and share it in multiple ways.
What are the main values Lands Design provides to its users?
  • Complex tool for 2D drawing and 3D modelling in an easy and fast way for projects of landscaping, civil engineering and urban design.
  • Plant database with more than 1800 species: search and insert plant species, each one with its own technical specifications and detailed characteristics.
  • Setting out plans and Landscape project documentation: automatically generate 2D technical plans of a landscape project and create lists to quantify the information on the plant species, zoning areas, irrigation systems, etc.
  • Realistic images, virtual tours: Lands Design includes libraries with real trees, each one with textured materials on leaves, branches, trunks and flowers. They can have different render appearances for season change simulation.
  • Powerful 3D Terrain modeling tools: create terrains from contours, elevation curves, point clouds or import terrains from the web just by indicating the location. Lands Design includes a set of tools to easily modify terrains, calculate the volume of land movements, apply cut and fills, hollows, etc.
  • Civil Work: create paths, stairs, dwarf walls, fences, or element rows for your landscape project.
  • Irrigation system tools: define the installation using different sprinkler types, sprinkler distributions, and pipes.
  • Fun and easy to use: intuitive, easy and efficient workflow. Just try out Lands Design for some days to discover how friendly and compatible it is.
  • Free technical support and constant development based on the users’ needs and requests.
Who is Lands Design aimed at?

Lands Design is aimed at landscape architects, architects, urban planners, civil engineers, town council technicians, constructors, forestry and environment consultants and designers and draftsmen in related field or even computer graphic artists. It can also be a very useful tool for any Rhino or AutoCAD user interested in landscape modeling or wishing to add vegetation species to their architectural projects and designs.

Is Lands Design a McNeel Product?

Lands Design has been developed by Asuni, a company specialized in software development and distribution for architectural design, engineering, landscaping and industrial design. Asuni and McNeel Europe belong to the same company group, both located in Barcelona and working in close collaboration on Lands Design and other projects.

Technical features

What Rhino or AutoCAD versions are compatible with Lands Design?
Rhino
  • Lands Design requires Rhino 6 (SR 34 or later) or Rhino 7 (SR13 or later) version to run. But these SR (Service Release) versions might change in each new update of Lands Design. We recommend using the latest Rhino service release, that you can download from the following links:
  • Lands Design is not available for Rhino 5 version.
AutoCAD
  • Lands Design is compatible with the AutoCAD Architecture 2015-2023 versions.
  • Lands Design is not available for AutoCAD LT version.
Is Lands Design available for MAC?

We certainly are very interested in developing a Lands Design version for Rhino OSX and AutoCAD OSX, but our development team may need to determine how much work/time we need for adapting Lands Design to the OSX system. Since the Rhino OSX version is released quiet recently, our development team is studying to determine how much work/time we need for adapting Lands Design to the OSX system.

Does Lands Design read GIS data?

Yes, it does. The  laImportGisData command lets you import .shp files into the document.

Is it necessary to have Flamingo nXT installed to render the Lands Design plant species?

No, it isn’t. Although Lands Design provides an extensive library of Flamingo nXt plants associated with the Lands database species, it is not necessary to install Flamingo nXT to use these plant species. This library is installed by default with Lands Design and you can create realistic renders of these plant species with any render engine supported by Rhino or AutoCAD such as the Rhino render, V-Ray, Enscape, Maxwell or Flamingo nXT, of course.

Is it possible to import and export Lands Design documents (the Rhino version) from and into AutoCAD?

Yes, it is. Since both programs can save and read .dwg files, this is the file format required to exchange models between AutoCAD and Rhino.

However, the Lands elements are not identified as such between both programs when using dwg format. The 3D elements like plants or terrains are recognized as meshes when they are read in the other program. This is something we plan to improve in future versions of Lands Design.

On the other hand, there are many tools to create 3D objects from 2D curves, or elevate curves for creating terrains, so it is useful to create the project in 3D in Rhino from a 2D drawing created in AutoCAD (in dwg), or the other way around.

How to render the Lands Design project?

There are a plenty of renders which are completely compatible with Lands Design format (in addition to Rhino render in Rhino version of Lands Design). These renders include V-Ray, Flamingo nXt, Maxwell, Enscape, etc. Lands Design provides a material manager which supports materials of all render engines that are supported by Rhino (Rhino render, V-Ray, Flamingo nXt, Maxwell, etc…).

How does Lands Design integrate with Grasshopper?

Lands Design integrates with Grasshopper with the Lands Grasshopper components (in Rhino version only). 

These components are tools available in Grasshopper that let you create plants, terrains, paths, sprinklers and more and automate many modeling tasks. 

You can also obtain the information of Lands Design elements and combine them with other add-ons in the Grasshopper environment, aimed at multiple purposes.

More information here.

What are system requirements to run Lands Design?

Basically the system requirements are the same as suggested for Rhino and AutoCAD. Including following characteristics:

Hardware:

  • 64-bit Intel or AMD processor (Not ARM).
  • No more than 63 CPU Cores.
  • 8 GB memory (RAM) or more is recommended.
  • 600 MB disk space.
  • SSD Type Hard Disk.
  • OpenGL 4.1 capable video cards are recommended.
  • 4 GB Video RAM or more recommended.
  • A Multiple-button mouse with a scroll wheel is recommended.

If you plan to use Lands Design with some rendering sofware, then we recommend 16 GB memory (RAM).

Windows Operating Systems: Windows 8.1 or newer.

Internet connection: for download and license validation.

Support

Is there any personalized technical support?

Yes. Lands Design support team is providing you an unlimited and personalized technical support whenever you need it. Free support is provided for users of evaluation period as well. The aim is to provide our users the maximum efficiency when they are working with Lands Design. So you can write us through landsdesign@asuni.com.

Which training material are available to learn Lands Design?

The existing material to learn Lands Design can be found from the following sources:

Is Lands Design available in other languages?

Lands Design interface is available in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Czech, and Chinese simplified. Lands Design Help is available in English, French, Italian, Spanish and German.

License

I have a license. How can I get the commercial version?

If you already have a Lands Design license, you can turn the evaluation version into a commercial version by activating the program. This can be done running the _laLicense command, and selecting any of the valid license modes for using Lands Design completely (Standalone, Network, or Cloud). (Read more about license modes here).

You can download the most recent version of Lands Design from the download page.

Is the license permanent?

Yes, it is. After purchasing Lands Design you can work with it as long as you wish. There are no subscription or maintenance fees. The update releases within the same major version are free of charge. You may receive notifications when they are available.

Which license type to choose?

Lands Design has four license modes:

  • Evaluation: All Lands Design features are fully functional during the trial period. No product key is required.
  • Viewer: Lands Design runs in Viewer mode when the evaluation period has expired. When this happens, you can open and save documents that contain Lands Design objects, but some features are disabled.
  • Standalone: A valid product key is required to run Lands Design in standalone mode. Buy Lands Design to get a valid product key.
  • Network: Use a Lands Design license acquired from the Zoo server.
  • Cloud: Use a Lands Design license acquired from the Cloud Zoo server. The Cloud Zoo server is a free service provided by McNeel that lets you manage the Lands Design license online

Learn more about Lands Design license modes here.

Does Lands Design support floating licenses?
Yes, it does. Lands Design supports floating licenses using Cloud Zoo, or the Rhino Zoo, both free services of McNeel. Learn more about License modes here.
Can I use a single Lands Design license in different computers?

You can install Lands Design in different machines. But a single Lands Design license can only run in one machine simultaneously.