The AEC technology industry has been seeing increasing momentum in the extension of the model-based concept of BIM to the design and development of infrastructure projects such as roads, railways, and bridges, with several tools targeted towards civil engineers. However, tools that extend BIM to the comparatively smaller domain of landscape architecture are still non-existent. For the most part, landscape architects are still working in 2D CAD, even if the corresponding building design has been done using BIM. Not only does this prevent landscape architects from availing of the many benefits of BIM that their architectural and engineering colleagues are enjoying, it also makes it difficult for them to be an integral part of the building team early on when the most critical decisions about the building design are made.
This review looks at Environment, a plug-in to Revit that extends its capabilities for site and landscape design. It includes tools for modeling terrain from…