topic Trees, plants and landscape in the regular 3D window in Libraries & objects

Trees, plants and landscape in the regular 3D window

Ben Thomas — Sat, 17 May 2025 03:33:34 GMT

Hi all

I tend to walk through the buildings with my clients in the 3D window of Archicad. I find this very useful and productive and as I walk them through I can ensure they become aware of the elements I want to draw their attention to. I prefer the Archicad 3D window to using a BimX model for several reasons not least the design options.

However, I have been struggling with creating gardens, in particular halfway realistic looking shrubs and trees that will display nicely in the 3D window. I have fairly recently upgraded from quite an old version of Archicad to 27 and am amazed that there still does not seem to be a resolution to this problem.

So focusing on display in the 3D window, I find the single, flat billboard type plants unacceptable. The illusion of the space is destroyed when you see that they have no depth. I have come across some `cut out' plants that have multiple images (up to 60 degree intervals) and whilst they are an improvement they are also very basic and appear dense in the 3D window.

The full 3D plant models are not feasible; not enough options and slow down/crash the program.

The best I have found so far are the 3DBAM trees from the garden works library. They have real potential. They still look very crude but do give you a correct spatial feeling when navigating in 3D. However, there are only a handful of (very European/North American) looking trees and bushes.

My questions are:

Are there any more and greater variety and improved trees like the 3DBAM trees from the Garden Works Library?

Are there any other landscape and plant resources out there I might not be aware of?

Any other suggestions how to nestle my designs into a nice garden to show it of in the 3D window?

Many thanks

Operating system used: Windows 10

Re: Trees, plants and landscape in the regular 3D window

CosminF — Sun, 18 May 2025 12:18:07 GMT

Hi,

You can take a look on bimobject: https://www.bimobject.com/en/search?sort=trending&fullText=plant&fileTypes=cd59758a-6f6b-4634-9966-7c2c70b3520b&page=1

Or 3dwarehouse (and download the collada file which load nicely into archicad): https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/search/models?q=plants

or bimcomponents: https://bimcomponents.com/Search/plants

Be wary of polygon number because complex models can significantly slow your file down.

Hope this helps.

Re: Trees, plants and landscape in the regular 3D window

Ben Thomas — Mon, 19 May 2025 22:31:52 GMT

Thank you so much for the links and information. I have downloaded some plants from various bim sites in the past but I only found a fairly limited selection, it was very time consuming and very much hit-and-miss. However, I was not aware of the collada file type and that this will work with Archicad, nor the 3D Warehouse site. I had a quick look and that has real potential. I will try to build a small library of useful plants. And thanks for the heads up, I will watch the polygon count.

Cheers