How to Draw a Landscape Site Plan

Having a landscape drawing allows you lot to quickly programme changes to your landscape every bit well as measure the square footage of your beds and lawn surface area so you can purchase the right amount of materials such as compost, mulch, fertilizer and more. This can help you relieve both time and money.

Permit's say your lawn fertilizer is meant to be spread at 20 lbs per i,000 square feet or you demand to add 3" of mulch to your beds how much should you buy? It's simple. Just indicate and click to discover out the areas yous're interested in to get square footage. It won't be exact but it'll be close enough for about uses.

Sketchup is a 3D modelling program that's very like shooting fish in a barrel to employ. Best of all information technology's gratis. There are two versions, the Pro requires a paid license simply SketchUp Brand has all the features you'll demand for gratis.

In this post I'll go over how to quickly make a second diagram of your belongings to assist y'all plan and manage your landscape. Best of all, you won't even need to pace outside and take measurements.

What You'll Need

To get started you lot'll demand the following:

SketchUp Make
A scanned copy of your property survey (gif, png, bmp, etc)
Google World software (to assist yous measure out items not on the survey)

Create Your Layers

SketchUp allows yous to create layers to separate different parts of your drawing. Y'all can plow visibility of layers on and off by clicking on the checkboxes and set the active layer by clicking on the round radio button.

In this instance I created the following layers.

SurveyImage (for the scanned property survey)
Property Line (difines the property border)
Firm (where you draw your house)
Hardscape (driveways, walkways, patios, etc)
Pool (water features or other accessories)
Garden Beds (flower or vegetable beds)
Lawn (your backyard area)

There is a default layer created with every cartoon, Layer0. Y'all tin leave this as is. Just make sure equally you're drawing different parts of your landscape you remember to switch the active layer.

Prepare Photographic camera

SketchUp starts out with the photographic camera in an orientation meant for 3D drawing. Since our programme will only be two-dimensional we will brand a couple of minor changes to the view to make it easier to work with.

First we'll modify the projection. From the principal menu select Photographic camera -> Parallel Project.

Next switch to an overhead view by going to Photographic camera -> Standard Views -> Top.

Import Property Survey

Start by making the SurveyImage layer active and go to File -> Import to load your digitized property survey image into your drawing. Just place information technology anywhere on the cartoon and scale it to whatever size. We'll bring it up to scale adjacent.

Using the Move tool (M key), move a corner of your property onto the axis marked by the red and green lines.

Pick a horizontal or vertical line on your property survey to utilize as a reference line. In the example we're using the bottom property line which is 75.08' according to the survey.

Switch to the Belongings Line layer.

Use the line tool to describe a straight line in the same orientation as the reference line (horizontal or vertical) that is the same length as the reference line. Using the line tool (L key) click on the centrality to commencement the line. Move your mouse in the direction you desire the line to be drawn so type in the length of the line and hit enter. In our example information technology's 75.08'.

At present use the ruler tool (R key) to measure the bodily length of the reference line on the property survey prototype. Carve up the reference length (75.08) past the actual length of the reference line on the image to determine how much yous demand to calibration the epitome. This is our scale gene.

Click on the belongings survey image and select the scale tool (S cardinal). Click on one of the corners to scale the image evenly in all directions and and so blazon in the scale gene to and hit the enter cardinal.

Use the move tool again to reposition the property survey image on the edge of the line. You can utilise the rotate tool (Q primal) to rotate the prototype if information technology's not perfectly aligned. Select the epitome, press Q for the rotate tool, click on the centrality (start of the reference line) so click on the contrary end of the reference line and rotate the image and so that it is inline with the reference line we drew.

If y'all don't have a property survey

If you lot don't take a property survey or you don't take it scanned you can use Google Globe to get measurements of your property. Detect your home using Google World and use the mensurate tool to have measurements off the satellite image of your belongings. This won't give y'all exact measurements merely information technology will give you a good idea of the size of different parts of your mural.

Depict your holding boundary

You should nevertheless have the Belongings Line layer active. Use the line tool to trace your holding boundary past post-obit the lines on your survey.

If yous have any fences or gates inside your property boundary draw those on this layer besides (or on a separate layer if you adopt.)

When you're done drawing the property boundaries the center will fill in with a solid color. We don't need this filled in expanse so simply click on information technology and delete information technology past striking your Delete fundamental.

Select all the belongings lines and make them 1 group by going to Edit -> Make Grouping from the principal menu. This volition prevent some of the other features we'll exist cartoon from getting mixed upwardly with the property line.

Describe your House

Before we can get to the landscape nosotros'll need to draw some of the permanent features of the belongings, starting with your house.

Use the line tool and start tracing out the outline of your house. In the example I also traced around the stride on the left and the concrete pad for the Air conditioning unit. These could as well go into a different layer but I consider them more part of the house.

This time we're not going to delete the filled in expanse. Instead we're going to use the paint tool (P cardinal) to fill the areas with different materials to ameliorate represent those areas. Select the appropriate materials from the Materials window and click on the areas to exist filled. Shingles for the firm, concrete for the pad and stairs, etc.

Your mural cartoon should exist taking shape and look something similar this.

Select all the lines and fills that make up your house and make them a group. (Edit -> Make Group)

Depict your Hardscape

At present make the Hardscape layer active and brainstorm tracing out the areas that define your driveways, walkways, decks, patios and other hard surfaces on your property. Use a combination of tools such as the line (Fifty cardinal), rectangle (R key), circle (C fundamental) and arc (A key) tools.

Create layers for other permanent features on your property that you desire to include on your plan such as pools, ponds, sheds, detached garages, gazebos, etc. and trace them from the property survey.

Use the paint tool to give each area an appropriate material to make it easy to identify in your drawing.

Draw Your Garden Beds

Nosotros don't need the holding survey image whatever more than so feel free to click off the visibility of it to declutter the cartoon.

At this bespeak yous're either going to want to draw your existing flower, shrub and vegetable beds or plan your new landscape beds. If you lot're drawing your existing landscape, take measurements of your beds or utilise the satellite image of your home and measure tool from Google Earth to get an estimated measurement.

Use the diverse drawing tools to define your beds and make full the areas with a cloth that makes them identifiable equally beds. Various mulch and gravel options are available in the Footing Covers materials group. There is no soil fabric. When I want to use that I just utilize Asphaltas long equally I'm not using Asphalt anywhere else.. It looks close enough.

If y'all want you can brand your garden beds into one large group, private groups or get out them as is. I like to leave them as is because it makes it easier to accommodate both the beds and the lawn at the same time in the future.

The landscape plan is starting to take shape.

Draw your Lawn Area

The last stride to get a bones mural plan is to draw the lawn areas. Make the Lawn layer active and utilize the diverse drawing tools to define where your lawn volition exist.

I like to break up the lawn into different sections based on how I tend to h2o or fertilize. For instance the front end lawn, side backyard, back lawn, and and so on. You can do something similar if you like.

When you're done utilize one of the grass materials to make full in the lawn sections and so they're easy to identify as lawn in your drawing.

Your finished programme now looks like this:

Using your Mural Plan

Now with the basic plan consummate we can use it to do some pretty bang-up things.

Measure Areas

SketchUp has a tool that volition requite yous the surface surface area of a selected surface in the drawing. Allow's saw we desire to buy fertilizer for our backyard. We know that nosotros demand to use 20lbs per i,000 sq ft but how many square feet of lawn do we have?

It's now easy to find out. Right click over a lawn surface area and select Area -> Cloth from the popup menu and it will give you lot the square footage of all the lawn areas in the drawing. In this case that's almost 4,800 foursquare feet. To find out how much fertilizer we'll need it'southward just 4,800/one,000 * 20lbs = 96lbs of fertilizer.

You need to add more than mulch to your beds? How much mulch should you social club? Just right click on 1 of the beds, select Area -> Material and y'all'll get the square footage of all your mulched beds. If you want to add 3" of mulch multiply the square footage by the depth of mulch in inches and divide past 12 to get cubic feet. Divide over again by 27 to get cubic yards. In our example there is about 1,250 sq ft of mulched beds. We'll demand 1,250 * 3 / 12 / 27 equals most 12 cubic yards of mulch.

Programme your Plantings

You tin also create layers and describe out where existing plants, trees, shrubs are located or where you'd similar to constitute them. Utilise the circle tool to define the spread of plants, make the circle a group and position and scale it where you'd similar. You can go a footling more creative with the shapes and colors to differentiate plants.

Plan your Irrigation

If you want to add sprinklers or drip lines just create a layer for them to draw their placement. Put each different blazon of pipe on a different layer. Then when you want to know how much 1/2" baste line you lot'll need, select all the items in the layer and await at the Entity Info window and it will tell you lot the length of those lines.

Have whatever more ideas of what you tin exercise with this plan or how yous employ SketchUp in your garden and mural planning. Please share them in the comments below.

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Source: https://www.organiclawndiy.com/2013/09/how-to-draw-landscape-plan-with-sketchup.html