A good thing to do is to get in the habit of drawing the same plant symbols for the same plant every time (and at the same size). This helps you feel the scale of the drawing and makes the design much more familiar to you over time. You will know when you are crowding your inkberries or when you are getting spotty just by looking at the plan without measuring (this is more true when using cad). Graph paper and the other techniques lnscapr mentioned are great. They speed you up and keep you neat at the same time. The biggest improvement usually comes when you start using thicker pens (heavier line weight) for things like houses, sheds, and pools, somewhat thinner pens for driveways, walkways, porches, decks, etc,.., a little thinner for bed lines, some plant symbols, text, ..., and very fine pens for other plant symbols and fine textured hatching (adding patterns to areas for such things as ground covers, annuals, decking, bricks,...). Stipples (or dots) added around the edges of things adds a lot of life to a plan. A huge thing is light, shade, and shadow. This really pops a drawing and is very easy. If you use color, make your plants two tone (at least) by filling the symbol with a lighter color and adding a darker one in the lower right third of it (you don't want to shade the upper side of a symbol on a plan regardless of where north is because it looks weird on the plan). Outside of the symbol, add a black shadow around that lower right part of it. Also add shadow on the right side and bottom side of any building or raised element. It will shock you how much it changes the look.

I agree with pretty much laag has had to say on the subject. I'll still occasionally sit down at the board to hand draw a plan (usually if I'm redoing a yard we put in fifteen years ago and I can put vellum on the original basemap), but 90% of what I do involves a blending of AutoCAD and hand-drawing. Layer management is the key- as was alluded to, you can have your pretty picture for the client to look at; turn some layers on or off, and have a grading and drainage plan; turn a few more on and off and have your irrigation, electrical, or what have you, all in one drawing. So for workflow efficiency as well as accuracy, I'm a huge fan. You may be able to save money and pick up an older copy of AutoCAD somewhere. Our office still uses AutoCAD2002LT. Even though Autodesk no longer supports it, we have few problems and it does everything we need from a CAD program. As regards the learning curve, it's well worth it! My instructor told us that once you know CAD, you can learn pretty much any other graphics program much more quickly. It's true; I picked up Photoshop and SketchUp really quickly, faster than I think i would have otherwise. There are also some free CAD programs floating around, some of which I've heard are actually pretty good. I've just never tried them, because once you know AutoCAD, having to re-learn how to draw a line will drive you insane! I say, if you'll have access to the program and you can make yourself use it frequently, go for it. There are great ways to integrate technology (for ease of use) and hand drawing techniques (because no software will ever have the soul of a hand render); Jim Leggit does a phenomenal job sharing techniques in his book, Drawing Shortcuts.

AutoCAD is by far the most commonly used design program for professional building design (architects and engineers) and is owned by the American company Autodesk. It only runs under MS Windows. It's file formats, DXF & DWG, have become the de facto standards for file transfer between competing CAD programs. ArchiCAD is a far more sophisticated BIM (Building Information Modeling) program that creates a virtual building and is owned by the Hungarian company Graphisoft. It is used mostly by larger architectural firms and runs under MS Windows and Macintosh OSX. The program can import and export DXF & DWG files if they haven't been corrupted. Both programs began in the early 80's and were the first of their kind. Autodesk purchased a BIM program in '02 called Revit in order to competes with ArchiCAD. Each of these programs costs a small fortune and each provides a "viewer" program so others can open and look at the files on their computer. Since all you want is a set of plain paper design documents to give to a builder and get permits, I don't see why the choice of the CAD program would matter. Make sure the drafter isn't using a "STUDENT" version of either program and that you have a way to print the files later from a USB flash memory stick, etc.

This argument comes up too often, and it's silly that people (on both sides of the argument) get their noses out of joint. Here's an analogy: I make wedding cakes -- not many, just a few every year. I make incredible, custom-designed cakes. I use only my own unique recipes (and if you'd tasted the last cake I made -- Key Lime with raspberry filling and lime cream cheese frosting ... or the chocolate truffle cake with salted caramel filling that I'm developing for my own daughter's wedding, you'd understand), and people often come back for seconds or thirds. I deliver, set up, serve, package the bride's top layer for the freezer, and clean. My cakes are always a big topic of conversation at the reception, and former brides often tell me that years later their friends still remember their cakes. Every single time I do a cake, a few people quietly ask me for my card, saying they or a friend absolutely must come talk to me about a cake for a future wedding. HOWEVER, when people see my prices (all that quality and service doesn't come cheaply), about half of them suddenly decide that Harris Teeter's sheet cakes are pretty good after all, or doughnuts stacked up like they do on Pinterest is witty and different. Am I insulted? Nope. Everyone doesn't value the same things. Houses are the same. Not everyone has the same expectations, not everyone cares at the same level, and not everyone has the same resources. Thus, different choices. In my own life, here's what I know to be true: When my grandparents married back in the 1930s, my grandmother (a teacher and business owner, not connected to design in any way) spent two years drawing a sketch ... they built it, raised their family in it, my mother raised her family in it, and now my brother's raising his family in it. It's a GREAT house -- a mixture of farmhouse and bungalow. The public rooms are oriented to take in the best light (through very classic windows). The closets and pantry are all pushed to the interior of the house, and the house has wonderful flow. My very forward-thinking grandmother planned ahead for a living room extension (she couldn't afford to build it as big as she wanted), and she planned for extra bedrooms and a second bathroom to be added to the back. Over the years, it's had three kitchen remodels and a couple new roofs. The back porch was taken in to become a laundry room, and two new porches have been added to opposite sides of the house. Could it have been designed better? Maybe, but it's evolved over the years and has served our family well. On the other hand, my aunt was an architect. She and my uncle bought a simple ranch house -- I didn't think much of it. She really had "an eye" that other people don't. She opened up the family room and the living room into one area, and she added a master bedroom /bath towards the front of the house. It now looks NOTHING like that little ranch in which they started. It's now something of an eclectic contemporary, and I love it. It flows so well and is unique -- completely different from anything else I've ever seen. She cut "windows" between some rooms to let light flow through. She added a super cute flagstone patio out back. But does it function any better than the house my grandmother designed? No. And a final thought: Not everyone approaches this task with the same level of ability. Clearly trained architects have ability, or they wouldn't have made it through school. But among the rest of us, some have a better sense of space, etc. than others. The important thing is to be honest with yourself about your own abilities.