There are times when it is useful to store extra non-graphic information landscape plans. It might, for example, be advantageous to store behind a furniture symbol, the details of size, cost, manufacturer, and material used in construction. In the same vein, GPS and Google Earth and photographic information about species symbols might also be required in some instances by users. CAD drawings containing this extra information then become much more than a simple replacement for a drawing board. They can become a living document, one that evolves over time as the garden or larger landscape develops.
Tip: It is possible to store extended information behind any entity – lines, arcs, blocks, etc. are all candidates for stored information. There is one rider however, if you want to use the gCADPlus tool that propagates extended data across many instances of the same symbol, the symbol must be created as a block.
An example
Although it is not obvious, the design shown below contains a considerable amount of extended information. Details of outdoor furniture, seating, paving, and irrigation design are all there but only appear when required
Types of extended data that can be stored in gCADPlus drawing files are listed below.
Furniture data
For example, you may have specified outdoor furniture from a particular manufacturer in the design. It would be useful to store the manufacturer name, type, and cost of the furniture shown. The figure below shows some information about a cast iron firepit in a gCADPlus drawing with extended entity information about that furniture set. This information is not printed but can be displayed on cue or extracted to an Excel file.
Paving
A design may well call for an area of paving outlined by a polyline. The STOREDATA feature is used here to store information about the supplier, paver size/type, cost/paver, etc.
Decking
The feature might well be used to store information and a quote about a quotation for a custom build of some decking/seating around the base of a tree.
Irrigation
The length type and supplier of irrigation equipment can be stored.
Grass
The total area to be grassed, the type of turf, and the company contracted to lay the grass is often stored.
Lighting
Important information about lighting data can also be stored.
Species
The species option of the extended data tool allows the storage of considerable extended information about particular plants. Although not used in the example below, if gCADPlus was being used in (say) botanical gardens or arboretums, information on Google Earth location and GPS data can be recorded along with species information in the extended data dialog box.
Google Earth
The species data dialog box also allows the storage of klm file information. A feature that may well be useful for staff at botanical gardens.
Link to URL
gCADPlus features the ability to store a URL, a link to an external location as part of extended entity data. In the example shown if a user clicks on the link to url button in the species dialog box, they will be taken to an online database where information on propagation methods for the plant is stored.
Tip: To display the information in real-time, make sure that EXT tab is pressed, and when your mouse hovers over the entity, much of the stored data becomes visible. It works just like a tooltip.
Tools to manage extended data
This movie shows that it is possible to store non-graphic information in landscape drawings. That data can be attached to entities and blocks and allows the display of information about decking, paving, furniture, and species information. We show how to edit the information, turn off the display of extra data and extract information to spreadsheet format.
Highlight extended data
This option can be used to highlight in magenta color those entities in a design that have extended data associated with them. If entities such as the circle outlining the canopy of a specimen of the Grey Alder (shown below) contain extended data,
Extract stored data
This option writes all extended entity information contained in a drawing to a CSV data file ready for spreadsheet analysis.
Propagate stored data
Use this option to update a block symbol with extended data. For example, if in an arboretum, the same symbol had been used to indicate many instances of the same plant species then use this tool could be used to update all instances of the block to carry that same extended entity data.
Movies showing the use of extended data
Managing extended data in landscape drawings with gCADPlus. We store non-visual data with surface treatments, seating, links to photos of species, etc. in the drawing file.
This movie attempts to answer this question from a potential user “Firstly I want to be able to design my garden, then I want to make it a living document where I can record the plants as I plant them and record information about them such as date of planting, where I bought them from, etc.”
This movie shows how the extended data feature in gCADPlus can be used to store and extract information about irrigation equipment in a design for a large-scale domestic setting.