Introduction
Plants
It has been a long time since we looked at the plant tool. Users have been asking for an update, so this month we are looking at Plants and Planting in our webinars. 
Plants can be placed with the Plant Tool and with the Landscape Area tool.
The Plant tool is ideal for placing small groups of plants, avenues of planting, or where you want to specifically locate each plant.
The Landscape Area tool allows you to place vast areas of planting much more quickly than you can with the plant tool. The Landscape Area tool also allows you to place a mix of plant types. If you have large areas to plant, the Landscape Area tool will make it much faster. It is not suitable for placing specific locations of each plant.
A Vectorworks plant is made of 3 components:
- The first component is the 2D (Top Plan) view of the plant. This usually has the graphic design of the plant. Often has classes to control different views of the plant and their lines, outlines, shading, etc
- The next component is the 3D component of the plant. This is usually a photo realistic image prop. Image props are one of the quickest and easiest ways to get the 3-D plant. Building realistic 3-D models of the trunk branches and leaves is time consuming.
- The last component is the data. The plant can store a large amount of non-graphic information (data). The plant can record the type, category, leaf colour, flower colour, etc. There is almost no limit to the information you can attach to a plant.
These three parts are brought together to make a plant. When you place the plants in the design it is known as a plant instance. When a plant is stored in the resource manager it is known as a plant style. The plant style is the default view of the plant, like a plant symbol, or like a plant library.