Released: 24-February-2007

Redstart Software

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www.GardenSketch.com

What is GardenSketch?

GardenSketch is design software which can help plan and lay out any area, from the smallest garden plot to the largest landscape, enabling the planner to visualize a garden space before any plants are purchased, in color, in any season.GardenSketch's specialized drawing tools make designing landscapes easy. The existing landscape can be easily entered by incorporating aerial or satellite photos. GardenSketch enables the planner to choose suitable plants with its advanced search capability. It makes buying plants and mulch easy by computing the number of plants and/or amount of mulch required for an area.For home users, GardenSketch saves information about last year's planting season, (ex: germination, plant-out dates, and degree of success) and can help determine the optimum time to plant seedlings. It can even print labels for flats/pots when starting seeds.For commercial users, GardenSketch is compatible with an open XML file format, and uses OpenGL to maintain speed even with large numbers of plantings. GardenSketch can handle large plans by managing smaller garden plots overlayed on a master plan. GardenSketch can be customized after purchase by using plug-ins.

System requirements

GardenSketch runs on Apple Macintosh computers running OS revision 10.3.9 or greater. This version has been tested so far on systems running OS revision 10.4.8, with G4 , G5, and Core Duo processors.

Installation

GardenSketch is installed by dragging the GardenSketch application into your applications folder.Directories are created in "~/library/applications support" to hold the Material database, and in ~/pictures to hold plant images.

Introduction to GardenSketch

GardenSketch opens as a main window, plus two palettes on the left side.

• The upper palette contains two sets of tools. The upper set of tools controls actions. The lower set of tools controls drawing actions (ex: painting a line, adding plants, adding beds of plants) and the shapes (ex: freehand, rectangle, line, arc) into which the plants are placed.• The lower palette (Materials) contains materials to add to the plan.Here's how to start a sample plan:

1. Start the application by double-clicking the GardenSketch icon.
2. Choose Common Plants from the upper material palette menu.
3. Pick Yarrow from the lower pop-up menu. If you allow an internet connection, then a picture of the plant will appear.
4. Drag the plant picture (or gray rectangle) onto the main window. That's one way to plant a single plant.
5. Click the placement tool , and then the line shape tool 
6. Click and drag a line on the plan. This has planted a row of Yarrow.
7. Click the planting bed tool , and then the rectangle shape tool .
8. Click and drag a line on the plan. This plants a rectangular bed of Yarrow.
9. Click the List tab at the top of the main window. There should be one row for each group of Yarrow planted. With correct quantities, plot name, year planted, and other data.

If you know the names of plants you wish to use in your garden, start instead in the List view by adding a row, and then fill in either the botanical (Latin) name or common name. If the plant is in the Material database, then you will be given a list of plants which match to fill out the other columns. If the plant is not in the database, then you will have to enter any data yourself. Make sure that at least the "Maximum spread" column is filled out, so that plants are the correct size on the plan view.Note that the Material database consists mostly of USA native plants at this time. Contributions of plant information to the open source Material database are appreciated.Now you can go explore the rest of GardenSketch. If there's a feature which you need, visit the "Feature Request" section of the GardenSketch page at SourceForge.net.PricingGardenSketch downloads are available for free from the iGarden project at SourceForge (www.sourceforge.net/projects/igarden). Donations through SourceForge are welcome, and will help speed development. Custom versions are available on a consulting basis. Please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Support

In order to stay up-to-date with the progress of GardenSketch, Redstart software has a web log supporting the GardenSketch beta at:http://beta.GardenSketch.com/Defects and feature requests can be entered at the GardenSketch project at:http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/igardenLIMITED WARRANTY AND LIABILITYTHIS SOFTWARE COMES 'AS IS'. REDSTART SOFTWARE CAN NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE OR LOSS OF DATA CAUSED BY THIS PRODUCT DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, WHATEVER THE NATURE OF THE DAMAGE.Company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the individual companies, and are respectfully acknowledged

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