Permaculture Design Software

Hello All,

Anyone use software (Mac) for designing/final mapping/layout?

Mostly, I want to make some of my paper designs look real perty'.

Thanks

Does anyone use google sketchup?

I use the program a lot for timber frame design.

It is a very powerful program and its free!

Does anyone know if there has been a rubies add on for permaculture, using pre designed plant and tree models?

LOL

Two open source multiple platform ones I have tried briefly are blender and sweet home 3d. neither were made specifically for landscape design.

Being that I have a love hate relationship with computers and software, I am planning on printing out some 11"x17" graph paper and plotting things out on that. Think it is easier and quicker than finding and learning software...

Hey there!

I am working on a permaculture focused web app that eventually would do what you are looking for (though the main focus initially is going to be creating and sharing guilds in a nice interactive way.)

Will make sure to post in this topic when there is something usable!

Awesome Ivan, please do post it here!

I use OmniGraffle on the Mac, but admittedly not for Permaculture Design though it seems to excel at design in general with garden design capabilities as well.

I use software at www.Growveg.com to keep records of what I'm up to and to plan for the future.

It is very easy to use.  However it is a paid for thing.  I think you can still get a trial month free. 

First time I signed up for it I drew my plans in the trial period and printed them out, but didn't sign up.    Forgot about the thing for a couple of years and then decided to sign up & pay up for real.  Guess what they still had my old plans!  I was well impressed. 

So worth a look anyway.

any updates Ivan? Or anyone else have good recomendations for software?

I use the Better Homes and Gardens Landscape and Deck Designer 7.0. It works fantastic.

I use Inkscape. I've started a collection of icons set to scale 1:100. Not sure how best to share this and allow for others to collaborate.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/13cwfo2nldt7983/Vd2-i4ktLu
Thoughts?

Anything new for 2014?

I've been using Libre office to make tables that link the Plants for a Future Database to a table of locally available plants that I compiled from nurseries, books on traditional first nations use of plants and local gardening books to create a list of almost 600 available edible species of plants in my area. Others can download the database and create their own locally available plants table using availability lists from nurseries and then the database will sort through your lists and pull out all of the edible ones, or all of the nitrogen fixing ones, or all of the drought tolerant ones, or all of the edible, drought tolerant nitrogen fixing ones... Then it can show you where to find those plants. Fortunately this is all up and running on my computer and I've transferred it to a few machines however we need to get it online so that nurseries can help us make the available plants tables and update them. See eeLANdpLAN.blogspot.com for more info and to lend a helping hand.