SketchUp For Garden Design Software

Garden Design Software

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3D Garden Design Overview

Using software to design a garden is the best way to ensure you get the landscape you want before breaking ground. Whether designing a brand-new garden or re-modelling an existing space, SketchUp’s simple, intuitive tools create and work with an accurate 3D model so you can see your ideas come to life. Available for both PC and Mac, SketchUp is both simple for beginners and powerful for professional gardeners and landscapers.

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3D Garden Design Tool

SketchUp allows you to model a garden now and how it will be once landscaping is completed. You can use the fully accurate 3D model to ‘walk around’ a design, quantify the amount of work involved and to identify any potential problems before work begins. The ability to quickly adjust conditions also allows you to see what a finished design will look like year-round – without having to wait for the seasons to change.

Quickly Visualise Your Garden Designs

Simple yet powerful, SketchUp Pro makes it easy to turn imagination into reality. Intuitive tools allow you to draw, stretch, rotate and scale objects so that the 3D model is a perfect representation of your plan. The model is much easier to visualise for non-professionals than traditional section and illustration designs are. Garden design plans created in SketchUp can be updated as the project progresses too. You can analyse problems, redesigning elements as required as the project progresses from model to reality.

Share Your Vision

Using SketchUp Pro as a garden landscape design software allows you to unleash your imagination – and share the results. Delight your clients with engaging, appealing 3D garden designs – and get their buy-in at the very earliest stages of your projects.

Go further still with augmented reality and virtual reality. Provide a completely immersive experience that brings your designs to life. Use those experiences to refine and optimise the designs, giving your clients exactly what they want.

Create Design Documentation

More than just a tool for making models, SketchUp Pro garden design software is practical too. Use your models to extract plans and documentation for your contractors so they can turn your vision into reality.

Professional Garden Design

Professional garden design typically involves much more than skillful plant choices. There is landscaping, remodelling and external structures like pergolas, patios and summerhouses that need to be considered too. Being able to model these features in advance – and then to view them in the context of the surroundings.

Simple Garden Design

SketchUp has been designed to make 3D modelling as simple as possible for beginners and seasoned professionals alike. Intuitive tools allow you to get started immediately, developing new skills as you work on real world projects. SketchUp has a thriving global user base, and there are thousands of 3D garden design resources and tutorials available online to help you get started – and to go further. With no steep learning curve (and a reasonable licensing model), there are no limits to what you can achieve.

Garden Design Software FAQs

What is the best garden design software?

The application that allows you to accurately convert your ideas into 3D models fastest and with the least effort!

Is garden design software free?

You can download a free (no credit card required) trial of SketchUp Pro here.

Where can I get help?

There are thousands of free tutorials, guides and videos that will help you get started with SketchUp. Try googling for answers or ask a question in the thriving SketchUp Community forums.

What Software Do Garden Designers Use?

SketchUp Pro is widely used and well respected, used by many professional garden and landscape designers to help visualise their ideas and provide supply contractors with work instructions. Individual members of the Chartered Institute of Horticulture and larger firms alike rely on the power and simplicity of SketchUp Pro.

What is the Best Garden Design Software?

There are many options available, but the best garden design software is the application that allows you to transfer your ideas into a working 3D model as quickly and easily as possible. Some advanced applications have a very steep learning curve, extending the time before you can be productive. Others may be too basic for anything but the simplest model.

SketchUp Pro balances powerful functions with easy-to-use tools to give you the best of both. As well as the drawing tools themselves, SketchUp users have access to the 3D Warehouse, an enormous online database of free shapes and models that will help accelerate their design process. There is also the ability to scan and upload photographs, images, and sketches ready for use in your 3D models.

Once you have a workable model, it is easy to adjust and update garden designs in line with the changing wishes of your client.

How do you Start Designing a Garden in SketchUp?

How do you get started with SketchUp garden design? First, sign up for a free SketchUp Pro trial, then download and install the software on your computer.

You can now test the basic drawing tools, access the 3D Warehouse and experiment using some pre-built models. Better yet, take advantage of some of the many thousands of free tutorials or online courses that will accelerate your learning and allow you to begin building workable, useful 3D garden designs more quickly.

SketchUp Pro

Free 7-Day Trial

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7-day SketchUp Pro trial now! Sign up below

The free trial download includes everything in a SketchUp Pro subscription package:

7-Day access to SketchUp’s free 3D software, SketchUp Pro for Desktop, LayOut, PreDesign and Style Builder, Augmented reality viewing on SketchUp Viewer for iOS and Android, Viewing on the following Mixed Reality (XR) applications: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Hololens, and HP Windows Mixed Reality.

All you need is an internet connection to download SketchUp Pro and a Trimble ID – no credit card required

About Elmtec

With over 25 years’ experience in the digital design community, Elmtec is one of the leading suppliers of professional hardware and software. Our specialists offer product knowledge, industry experience and support to ensure we save your business time and money.

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