Best Free Landscape Design Software

With more stress and focus on imagination, and the desire to spare more time on it, landscaping is a very rewarding activity and truth is, there is nothing like walking into a garden created first your imagination and your own hands, enjoying the glamorous view that is your brain child. It is very easy to imagine and grab a mental picture of scenery but often time we do not get to have the tangible picture of it.

But in bid to plan for a landscape design, imagine the cost that will be incurred in trial and error of all sort. However, apart from the cost incurred to get different materials for planning, there is a lot of the materials that cannot be procured to execute the planning process like the field, swimming pools. These materials are permanent and cannot be tried in any way. This shows and poses that the handiest tool for this landscape design project is the landscape design software.

Benefits of using Landscape design software

• It saves time
• It is cost-effective
• It gives a very enhanced level of creativity
• It is highly accurate
• It helps eliminate an immense level of resources wastage
• It has a high level of improved efficiency
• Gives the ability to make revisions to designs, thereby helps you to perfect your imagination before launching out for physical tryout.
• Gives the ability to save and reuse different design features and marked details.
• It grants the abilities to copy design which is difficult when the physical tryout is placed over digital design.
• It serves as an advantage to as many that have poor drawing skills. The software will give them leverage due to the features of the software.
• Most landscape design software grants the ability to integrate the estimating software, which gives you the idea is the cost estimate of every design that is made on the app.

Summary of Best Free Landscape Design Software

Best Free Landscape Design Software

In this article is compiled the 10 best landscape design software that can be enjoyed for free which will reduce the time for your search of one. Free in this article is in a different perspective, it can be completely free, free version but with pro upgrades, those with free trial alone and those that separate premium tools from the free ones. This article will be useful for professional hobbyist, homeowners, landscape design strategists and business owners or individuals that wanted to test the designs virtually before making the actual purchase.

SketchUp Free - Link

Of the best free landscape design software, SketchUp is a good pick of all. It has a lite version which is very perfect for personal use and also the pro version for professional. The app comes with a 3D modelling tool which runs straight from the web browser and became so simpler because you do not have to download it. This amazing feature is available on the Trimble website where the professional landscape designers are given room to animate their ideas and bring it to life.

Just with a simple signup, you have access to your repository on the Trimble connect which is a BIM software (building information management software) which a very advanced storage system up to 10GB of plans, images, and any other files whatsoever that you can commit to the repository. This is very handy when you cannot finish your design in a session as the building information management software keeps your files and design progress safe and accessible on other computers without having to transfer the files around.

In all the features, one of the notable features of the app is that it grants you access to the Trimble's 3D Warehouse which is a very comprehensive and vast library of 3D models shared from both users and vendors. And the app has interoperability support plus the capability of importing and exporting in diverse file format including STL, SKP, PNG, JPG and others.

Plan-A-Garden - Link

The software produced by a company called BHG (fully known as Better Homes and Gardens) allows you to create any type of garden design either it is small-sized or a whole yard design. The software is easy to use because it has many features to this effect. Every element for the design can be easily dragged and dropped and it has over a dozen structures to be utilized like the fences, decks, ceramic pots, gazebos and all. There are also pre-made templates that can be fully edited to suit the user taste.

On the software is over 150 flowers, trees, shrubs that can be used to beautify the garden as well as numerous plants which makes your design choices endless.

Marshalls Garden Visualizer - Link

The software is known basically for its simplicity and much more how sophisticated designs are made simple. It is free visualization software for the creation of 3D designs of the garden and allows you to take a virtual walk through it as in a video game.

In this software, you can specify the size you desired and the shape of the ground can be changed as well in any case of irregularities against the normal standard. Also, the software comes with a backup option that allows you to save your designs to the clouds and makes it accessible on another computer afterwards in as much they are in sync.

You can find and run Marshalls Garden Visualizer straight from your web browser but often time many people found it difficult because of the unity web player requirement. This problem can be solved, however, by trying a new browser like Opera or Firefox.

Kerkythea - Link

Kerkythea is a great and free solution to the productions of high-quality renders that works on the principle of accurate and physical lights and materials to get an efficient and effective outcome. Rendering on the software is so simplified that it gives the user an automated scene setup such as the GL real-time viewer, the material editor and the common and necessary settings in a single place on the interface.

The app is built with a very powerful render engine for Global Illumination Rendering which follows the real-world physics. This is basically what makes every design done with the software very easy and realistic the effect of material on the rendered image is held in high regard by the software which is why it features an amazing feature called Material Editor System. This gives you great and full control over virtually all the aspects of the material created.

The accuracy of the app is top-notch because of the operation in accordance with the ability to uphold physical laws of physics in the real world. The software used to be a plugin to the popular SketchUp but later become a standalone app over the years.

iScape App - Link

First, the limitation of this tool is the fact that it is available for only iOS devices. The app is used for designing an outdoor living space that works through the help of AR - Augmented reality. The major of the app is to allow you to have a very solid visualization of the projects carried out on the software. The app has a series of design tools which are handy in creating amazing designs, examples of the tools includes, duplicating, Spine/rotate, cut-out and cloning, textures, favorites.

In iSpace App, there is no shortage of elements needed for design as they are available in their numbers which makes the work much easier. The elements including the water features, fire pits, and the brick pavers.

The mind-blowing part of the app is that every element used for any design are in the iScape inventory which means that after designing, you can order that particular element used to try the design out physically.

Conclusion

In choosing what software you want to work with, you have to understand what functionality you needed in the software and the design. You must identify the good-to-have, the must-have elements and even the do-not-need elements. There are a number of these apps that are straightforward and doesn't require any professional skills whatsoever.