We used Sierra Landscape 3D (part of the Complete LandDesigner 5.0 suite, $44.95) to get 3 dimensional drawings of our landscape plans. The software does not produce the animated before/after/seasonal projections shown on this site. For those we did exports of static images, put them together to create animations, and added the descriptions at the bottom of each frame. Also, while the software does have an overhead plan view mode, you cannot export it and the plan you see on this site was created with a general drawing program.

Overall, Sierra Landscape 3D is pretty good. It does have some bugs, such as in the high definition rendering (where some objects disappear), and it is hard to draw exact unusual shapes, in our case curved walkways. If you delete items, the remaining items lose their height above ground (such as balcony railings) and you have to go into their properties and fix them. It runs on Windows NT and 98, but seems much happier under 98. In 3-D mode (as opposed to top-view), curved objects tend to be a bit jagged. That is taken care of in the high-definition rendering (provides better resolution intended for final results), but this was added very late in the product cycle, and isn't finished. It takes hours and hours, and while the edges are nice and smooth, some objects are missing entirely. For example, our house and balcony vanished, leaving the balcony railings floating in mid-air! Thus we chose regular 3-D exports to bitmap files: it exports the exact view you see in the program with jagged edges and all, but nothing is missing and it takes just an instant. You can also record an .avi movie of a walk-though, but it creates large files of very poor quality, and you lose the sound effects you have when walking through your design inside the program.

One helpful feature is that it will compute perimeter and area of items such as walkways, patios, groundcover, lawns, etc. and has suggested prices for units of these items as well as a custom price you can put in yourself. The only problem, again, is it's hard to get the shapes right, so if the shapes are only roughly correct, so will be the area and total price of the object. For instance, it's much easier to put a walkway on top of a spread of grass than to have two spreads of grass matching the shape of the walkway on either side, so your area for the walkway is also counted for the grass.

We also tried Broderbund Total 3D Landscape Deluxe ($39.95). This one has some functionality that Sierra is missing. It allows you to easily control the exact shape of things like walkways without skewing the proportions, but the graphics were far worse than the Sierra title, especially in 3-D mode. It refused to run under NT at all.

We also thought we would test Burpee 3D Garden Designer 3.0 Millennium Edition ($24.95), but it seemed more for gardens, not landscapes. You are limited to a small lot, such as 75x50 feet, for example, so we decided not to even install it.

In summary, even with its annoying flaws, Sierra Complete LandDesigner/Landscape 3D is by far the pick of these three. There used to be a product by the maker of AutoCad called Planix which looked very good, but has been discontinued and is not available.