SketchUp vs Lands Design Comparison: Everything You Need to Know Before Choosing

Lands Design is a landscape design and planning application developed by Asuni, built to run inside Rhinoceros and, in some editions, alongside AutoCAD. Landscape architects and garden designers must produce both technical drawings and convincing visualisations, but traditional workflows often split these tasks across separate 2D drafting and 3D modelling tools, leading to duplicated effort and inconsistencies. Lands Design addresses this with a building information modelling (BIM) approach tailored to landscape work, in which every element placed in the model, from terrain and paving to trees and shrubs, carries data and appears consistently in plans, sections, elevations and realistic 3D views. This allows designers to move from concept sketches to documentation and presentation within a single environment, with changes reflected throughout the project. Key features include terrain modelling from contour lines or survey points, tools for paths, walls, fences, water features and hardscape, and an extensive plant database of thousands of species with information on growth, flowering and foliage that can be simulated over time and across seasons. Irrigation design tools help plan sprinkler and drip systems, while automated plant and material lists, reports and labels support estimating and construction documentation. Visualisation options range from rapid previews to high-quality renderings and walkthroughs, and the software supports standard file formats for exchanging data with architects, engineers and other BIM applications. Because it builds on Rhino’s modelling engine, users gain access to a mature 3D toolset and its plug-in ecosystem. Lands Design is used by landscape architecture practices, urban planners, garden designers, municipalities and universities teaching landscape design. Pricing starts from around USD 795, typically as a perpetual licence, with a free trial available; there is no permanently free version.