Background

Punch! has long used the venerable "wheel" as a symbol for all types of plants. The wheel displays the plant's location and approximates the plant's size at a given age, supplying most of the relevant data that a casual Punch! user needs to know about the landscape plan he has created.

Landscape professionals, on the other hand, need to know more about the plants that they place on a plan. They know the plant types rather intimately, they know how particular varieties of plants shade, their colors and densities mixing to provide the entire mood of a yard. They impart that knowledge onto the landscape plot by drawing different symbols for the different plants they use. The symbology makes it clear whether the large tree in the center of the back yard is an impenetrable spruce tree or a tall, open elm tree, and how that affects the grouping of other trees around it. The symbology translates onto printouts and is available in the field, not just at the computer console.

PlantTracks can provide the missing dimension, allowing for a landscpaer's symbology for the plants being recommended in the plan. The symbol for the spruce and the elm may not only differ, but may me indicative of tree types and shape, of the original size of the plant (in terms of the container delivered in), and may even be color-coded. All this symbology will be available on printed plans as well as the file exports profided by PlantTracks's mother-tool, the PlansPlus PowerTool. Web-ready drawings may be created for direct uploading to a web site and viewed across the world in seconds.

As we have mentioned, PlantTracks is a MicroTool based on the PlansPlus PowerTool. In order to load and make PlantTracks work, both a PowerTool-ready version of the Punch! software and the PlansPlus PowerTool must first be installed on the computer. With these prerequisites PlantTracks and other MicroTools, such as PlantTracks, can be used simultaneously and in conjunction with one another to enhance the powerful Punch! plan-drawing features.

PlantTracks provides the following control to plant symbology:

• Any grouping of basic Punch! plants may be created and assigned to a symbology scheme. The method of doing this grouping is similar to the method used in Punch!'s object and plant grouping mechanisms, where choices may be easily moved back and forth between a universal list and the group's selections.
• Each grouping, called a scheme, is linked to a symbology for the individual plants in the group when they appear on the plan. The symbology consists in selections of these variables:
  • One of twelve basic plant symbols;
  • Symbols size, which may be absolute, or based on age, or based on the plant's maximum height/width;
  • An overall proportion size;
  • Color coding of the outline and the fill of the symbol;
  • Fixed or random rotation of the symbol;
  • Line thickness in drawing the symbol outline;
  • The degree of symmetry of the symbol.

PlantTracks and the contents of this help file are
Copyright©2006 by ThistleKeep Engineering; all rights are reserved.
Comments and suggestions, as well as support, are entertained at Lmc@ThistleKeep.com.
"Punch!" and other titles of Punch! operations are trademarks of Punch! Software L.L.C.