Listen to this articleLand F/X develops, sells, and supports software for landscape architects, irrigation designers, architects, and other design professionals. Below is our recent interview with Krystal Bozarth COO at Land F/X:
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to Land F/X?
A: Our products automate the most repetitive and time-consuming portions of the design process while ensuring accuracy. With just a few clicks of a button, designers can build their palettes and inventories for a site plan, and then populate the plan quickly by placing these items as smart AutoCAD blocks and hatches with attached data. Labeling, scheduling, and error checking are all instant and automatic.
Although we’ve grown over the past two decades into a full-fledged software provider with international clientele, we remain a family-based company whose clients can expect personal and world-class support from a staff that includes landscape architects and irrigation designers.
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Q: What is your backstory? How did your company come into being?
A: The origins of Land F/X date back to 1992, when a landscape architect named David Farmer was beginning to notice that although AutoCAD was becoming the industry standard for his field, it really wasn’t designed for landscape architects. David asked his teenage son Jeremiah, a trigonometry and computer programming prodigy, whether he could make some adaptations. Jeremiah had been programming since age six and helping his father at the drafting table for almost as long, so he was more than up to the task. He read the entire AutoCAD customization guide and set about creating a simple dialog box, designed by his father, to scale objects in a drawing. Born from the vision and needs of a landscape architect, this scaling tool became the first of myriad Land F/X tools created for landscape architects, irrigation designers, and architects by actual design professionals. After more than a decade developing the software for David’s use, the pair realized they were truly onto something, launching Land F/X in 2004. What began as a two-man operation in a garage has grown into a trusted tool for more than 2,000 (and counting) clients, and 5,000 users, throughout the globe. Jeremiah Farmer remains the company’s CEO and head developer, continuing to grow, promote, and support his family legacy.
Q: Can you explain the different tools Land F/X is creating and what they do?
A: We’ve developed our software under the premise that although native AutoCAD is an effective and widely used design tool, it lacks much of the functionality needed for landscape and irrigation design, as well as site and hardscape design and even architecture. Each of our plugins drops an industry-specific set of tools into the AutoCAD interface that allows designers to fly through the more tedious parts of the design process and check for errors automatically. Because they no longer have to complete laborious tasks such as counting plants and carrying out complex hydraulic calculations manually, designers are left with more time to design. Users can access current and accurate data from manufacturer catalogs to research and specify site amenities, lighting and irrigation equipment, and more – all without leaving CAD. We also connect AutoCAD with the 3D design platforms SketchUp, Revit, and Rhino, offering a seamless transition of a plan from 2D to 3D and back. Each of our add-ons is fully customizable, offering the level of stylistic flexibility required by design firms with exacting office standards.
Land F/X offers the following products:
· Design F/X:
Centered on the creation and organization of CAD details, the Design F/X plugin provides a simple and user-friendly library system that allows for the quick selection of details to use in a plan. Design F/X comes with a multitude of details built by our team for various construction purposes, and downloadable on demand. Users can select these default details, add their own details to the system for use in their projects, and organize their detail library to meet their needs – all from within CAD. Details scale automatically when placed in sheets. Details and callouts both update automatically in plans, and within other details, whenever the original detail is edited. Designers can build details quickly with the help of tools that allow for instant placement of blocks and hatches, enlarged detail sections that remain scaled and dimensioned accurately, and annotation using a series of smart callout tools that “know” which detail they are referring to.
· Planting F/X
The Planting F/X plugin transforms CAD into a design tool for landscape architects. From building a palette and placing plants to labeling, scheduling, and dressing a plan up for a presentation, everything is instant and accurate. Designers select a plant species from an ever-growing database of 20,000+ plants, assign each plant a symbol from an enormous collection of blocks and hatches, and place that plant in a drawing as a smart CAD object assigned with data ranging from symbol width to per-unit cost. Labeling and scheduling tools count plants automatically, and one-click error-checking tools ensure accuracy. Designers can colorize their plan and even send it to the 3D platform of their choice while plants maintain their data and exact placements. In addition, Planting F/X includes a set of site and hardscape tools that apply all these same specification, placement, error-checking, labeling, and scheduling principles to site amenities and hardscaping materials, which users can select using current data from manufacturer catalogs. A built-in (and award-winning) landscape lighting module gives users the power to design and lay out an entire lighting system, from power source and transformers to wires and fixtures, also selected from manufacturer catalogs. Planting F/X also includes all the CAD detail capabilities of Design F/X.
· Irrigation F/X
With the Irrigation F/X plugin, designers can create an entire irrigation system within CAD. Users can specify equipment, including selecting the necessary performance data, accessing current information directly from manufacturers’ catalogs – again, without leaving CAD. We make the entire design process easy and intuitive, from creating a schematic plan and configuring and placing a water source to laying out equipment, assigning pipe data, piping to equipment, grouping heads into zones, and testing for uniformity of coverage. All hydraulic calculations are applied automatically using the Hazen-Williams formula, and a series of scheduling tools allow for the instant cataloguing of equipment used and watering and runtime needs. Error checking is quick and painless, making it easy to move equipment, resize pipe, and verify coverage while knowing the plan will be accurate. Irrigation F/X also includes all the planting and site/hardscape functionality of Planting F/X, as well as the CAD detail capabilities of Design F/X.
· F/X CAD
Sold and supported by Land F/X, F/X CAD is an Autodesk authorized AutoCAD platform developed specifically for Land F/X users. F/X CAD is a streamlined version of CAD that includes all the tools Land F/X users need, and excludes all those they don’t, with an interface developed to work seamlessly with the Land F/X tool ribbons.
Q: Can you give us insights into your features?
A: Our features are unique in that they have always originated from requests by users of the software. Essentially, we’ve never changed our development style from the early days, when it was just Jeremiah and David. As David needed a tool to be created, Jeremiah would create it and immediately send it to him. We didn’t impose an additional fee for that service, and it wasn’t held off until an annual update. The same holds true to this day.
But now as more of a “real” software company, we can implement user suggestions for features incredibly quickly and then distribute them as part of the next weekly update. As such, our features tend to be heavy on the side of “down in the trenches” tools to help designers with their most tedious but necessary tasks. Generating quantities and labeling a plan are extremely labor intensive, which is where our software vastly outperforms any competition. We also have an entirely exclusive tool to verify a plan and highlight any issues. We have been unaware of any other CAD software that does this, despite our users having consistently reported it as their favorite feature.
Recommended: Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: We’ve come a long way since it was just a father-son duo in a converted garage office. Now with nearly 25 employees, more than 5,000 users, and our network of servers worldwide, we are able to pursue tasks that seemed beyond fanciful not so long ago.
A few examples: Our new lighting design module, which won a new product award at the Irrigation Association’s Irrigation Show 2019, will continue to see extensive development and expansion of features. We also have plans for the vast expansion of our Revit plugin this year. Looking even farther into the future, a Land F/X license will enable users to jump between platforms using AutoCAD, Revit, Rhino, or SketchUp, depending on the needs of the project at hand.
With the size of our office, and our position as the leader of landscape architecture software, we are definitely not slowing down. Our goal is to have every possible piece of content, every manufacturer’s product line, all just a click away.
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