PECULIARITY OF SOFTWARE SELECTION FOR TRAINING OF LANDSCAPE DESIGN

The article deals with the main problems and trends in development of software for landscape design in the context of accelerated introduction of BIM-technologies into the building and construction industry. It is shown that there is currently a significant lag in the development of computer BIM-products for landscape architects. The principal requirements which the modern BIM applications for landscape architects should meet and basic problems of their implementation are determined. It is argued that the decision to create a BIM application for landscape architects is possible the only by the world's leading developers of software products for the construction trade, such as Autodesk Inc. and Nemetschek and Trimble companies. It is also shown that all these developers are actively working towards improvement their existing architectural BIM applications in order to provide the possibility of their usage in landscape design. Analysis of the differences in the basic approaches used by the developers for this purpose revealed that Autodesk and Nemetschek prefer to improve their Autodesk Revit and Graphisoft ArchiCAD products, respectively, without engagement the third party developers whereas Trimble took approach with active participation of third parties - plug-ins developers to the SketchUp application. The conclusion of the article is that Autodesk Revit, Graphisoft ArchiCAD and Trimble SketchUp are promising applications for landscape design and, accordingly, for introducing them into the teaching process of colleges and universities. At the same time, it is revealed that the above-described approach by Trimble opens the prospect of the fastest conversion of SketchUp into a full-fledged BIM tool for landscape architects, and this should be taken into account when choosing an application for introducing into the educative process.