The Environment Plugin Heralds a New Era for Landscape Architects in BIM

presented by Environment for Revit®

Compared to other disciplines represented in the AEC, landscape architecture is a small profession with very specific needs. Therefore, it’s natural that the solution for landscape architecture in BIM had to come from the inside. Perhaps that is why the Environment plugin we’re talking about today was created not by a huge software corporation, but by a professional landscape architect from Israel.

The most popular BIM program is Revit, but its capabilities in landscape design are limited, making it a challenge to implement BIM in our industry. As a result, our cohort is the least involved in today’s BIM revolution. The Environment plugin takes an entirely new approach to solving these shortcomings, while providing the smoothest possible workflow.

Urban Park design fully modeled using the Environment tools

The plugin provides a completely new set of tools allowing you to fully implement Revit for landscape architecture design, without the need for any auxiliary programs or programming knowledge. Because the workflow does not depend on AutoCAD, Rhino, Dynamo, or programming skills, Environment is a reliable solution for all project scales and skill levels.

New opportunities

After compiling more than three years of user data, with many daily users being landscape architecture professionals and students, we came to see that our powerful yet intuitive set of tools for Revit opens BIM to many other disciplines as well, benefitting surveyors and civil engineers alike.
These game-changing tools enable topography design using contour lines or with reference to the height of other elements in the building model. Now you can create terrain in Revit from scratch, in the most convenient and familiar way.

The plugin also provides capability for color analysis of slopes and elevations of topography, as well as a tool for quick export of topographies created in Revit to LandXML format. A road engineer can now easily synchronize his Civil 3D work with your model.

Using Environment to perform analysis on site survey

Through the Environment plugin, Revit finally has its own scatter, allowing you to create a model of a forest, or to place plants according to the planting plan, in only a couple clicks.

The plugin has unique features, including the Wall Elevation Layout. This allows you to get a detailed surface view of multiple connected walls, including arched ones, to create a working drawing for the contractor. It also displays profiles of the surfaces adjacent to the wall.

Another feature of the Environment plugin is vertical alignment of an architectural wall, based on an automatic analysis of the surface profile on both sides of the wall. This saves you from calculating this analysis manually, and in some cases, can save up to 90% of your time compared to the standard workflow.

This is only a short list of the practical and fun features Environment was designed for, allowing you to speed up your workflow by automating many routine operations, and improving the graphical representation of your site plan in Revit.

Utilizing the features that Environment provides, along with some basic online guidance, more and more users can say that BIM is in the landscape architect’s tool belt at last.

Already a standard in landscape architecture

Environment is the most powerful tool today, giving landscape architects the opportunity to refuse AutoCAD and start working with modern BIM technologies. Using the plugin makes the landscape design process in Revit better, faster, and more convenient than any other BIM or CAD program.

Revit allows live collaboration with other AEC disciplines in the project such as architects, roads or electricity engineers

In recent years, the Revit + Environment bundle has become established in Israel, where it was created, as the standard for landscape design in BIM. Our daily users include major landscape architecture firms, BIM management companies, and academic institutions. It is recommended by all companies managing BIM projects and is already included in training programs across the industry.