Great iPad App for Sketching Golf Courses?

[Erik J. Barzeski]

I’d love to buy an iPad app to sketch golf courses.

Drawings would look something like the attached and ideally would have these features:

• Scaling (1” = 25 yards or whatever)
• Expandable canvas
• Vectors (not pixels)
• Layers
• Grid lines

Any suggestions (up to ~$50)?




P.S. That sketch is not mine.

[Jon Cavalier]

I’m not certain that any of these meet all of your requirements, but I’d look at the following:


Sharpr 3D
Autodesk (free)
AstroPad
Affinity Designer (I’ve never used this, but I use Affinity Photo, which is excellent).


Let me know what you end up going with - I’d love to hear your thoughts.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

I’m not certain that any of these meet all of your requirements, but I’d look at the following:

Sharpr 3D
Autodesk (free)
AstroPad
Affinity Designer (I’ve never used this, but I use Affinity Photo, which is excellent).

I will check those out. ALL of the requirements aren't needed, more of a wish list. Bad wording perhaps on my part… I'll check those out and let you know, yeah.


It's been hard to find great apps because I don't care about shading or paint brushes or all kinds of other things supported by many of the apps. I don't really even care about the pressure sensitivity with the iPad Pencil (though I'm sure I'll use it to slightly vary line thickness or something eventually…). And there are a LOT of drawing apps for the iPad.

[Jon Cavalier]

I know what you mean. Lots of drawing apps are “arty,” in that they’re more like painting apps. The ones I listed are (or should be) closer to CAD style apps.

[Marty Bonnar]

Autodesk Sketchbook is slightly ‘arty’, but very powerful, easy to use and, best of all, completely FREE!
F.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

Autodesk Sketchbook is slightly ‘arty’, but very powerful, easy to use and, best of all, completely FREE!

It is, and I'd already downloaded that application. I may have to play with the settings more, but it didn't seem to have any sort of scaling option, and I didn't see a canvas size option (though I'm sure one is quite likely to exist). Only the "pen" tool seemed to draw a crisp, clean line, and even then it wouldn't auto-join the two ends of the lines (I could zoom in and to this manually). It was pixel-based, too, it seemed. Not vector based.

It may end up being the best available, but it's probably not "great" for my niche purpose. But maybe none of them will be.

On the Mac, OmniGraffle Pro would work pretty well. But that's drawing with a mouse or a trackpad… not a pencil on an iPad.

[Marty Bonnar]

Erik,
Canvas size customisable here:
https://www.sketchbook.com/help/knowledge-base/how-to-create-canvases/
Cheers,
F.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

Erik,
Canvas size customisable here:
https://www.sketchbook.com/help/knowledge-base/how-to-create-canvases/

Thanks. Do you use SketchBook for this purpose? I was able to get about 8357 x 11800 with that. I'm still not loving the app for this purpose, but that's perhaps largely due to lack of familiarity.

I was looking at Linea Sketch - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/linea-sketch/id1094770251?mt=8 but as it's a paid app I'd want to get a little feel for it before purchasing.

[Marty Bonnar]

I just potter around in it. I’ve used AutoCAD with a landscape design plug-in called Artisan for almost all of my landscape and golf course design and construction work.
It’s hellishly expensive but very, very good.
F.

[Jeff Schley]

I just potter around in it. I’ve used AutoCAD with a landscape design plug-in called Artisan for almost all of my landscape and golf course design and construction work.
It’s hellishly expensive but very, very good.
F.

Marty what are we talking about price range of "hellishly expensive"? Over $200 USD?

[Marty Bonnar]

I just potter around in it. I’ve used AutoCAD with a landscape design plug-in called Artisan for almost all of my landscape and golf course design and construction work.
It’s hellishly expensive but very, very good.
F.

Marty what are we talking about price range of "hellishly expensive"? Over $200 USD?

Jeff,
Oh yes!
Basic AutoCAD is getting on for two grand (£) A YEAR subscription...! There’s additional plug-ins for things like BIM, landscape, engineering, product design, even animation.
F.


PS there are a lot of other CAD programmes out there. Some older versions can be incredibly cheap.

[Lukas Michel]

I’d love to buy an iPad app to sketch golf courses.

Drawings would look something like the attached and ideally would have these features:

• Scaling (1” = 25 yards or whatever)
• Expandable canvas
• Vectors (not pixels)
• Layers
• Grid lines

Any suggestions (up to ~$50)?

Adobe Draw (free)


Has gridlines and you can choose their width, so scaling is easy with some quick maths. Vectors and layers (and the documents are compatible with Adobe Illustrator if you have that). Doesn't have an expandable canvas as far as I can tell (although if you have illustrator you could probably work around that and expand the canvas in there).