form•Z pro 8 Brings New Modeling Concepts to Architects

By Bill Debevc, March 20, 2015

This is the second time I decided to spend my weekend seeing what I could learn to do with a piece of software I never used before. This time it was form•Z pro 8. If you have never tried this, I highly recommend you do so. Many of the products out there have trials. Take advantage of them and give them a try. Kick those virtual tires, spend some time learning the software, and take advantage of the online manuals, tutorials and video available. YouTube is an invaluable resource for learning new software or just new techniques. While you are downloading the software, check your beverage supply as well. If you enjoy the software as much as I enjoyed playing with form•Z, you are in for a surprise when you finally stop at 3:00 in the morning.

form•Z is a 3D modeler that can be used by architects for conceptual modeling and the creation of organic shapes

First I need to define what form•Z is and what we should expect from it. According to form•Z’s website, “form•Z pro is a powerful 3D design application featuring a variety of modeling personalities and tools with an easy to use interface to express and communicate your imagination. It is based on advanced 3D solid and surface modeling methods that maintain accurate representations as you progress from design to visualization, layout, animation and fabrication.” Diving deeper into their website I first thought it was a modeler similar to SketchUp. It is not. It’s much more powerful than that. It has more complex features that allow for much more free-form modeling and 2D document creation from the 3D model.

My next question was, will this replace Revit? No I don’t think it is a replacement for Revit. They do some of the same things, but form•Z is much more of a let’s-see-what-we-can-make software. As Frank Gehry recently said, “98 percent of everything that is built and designed today is pure s**t.” This software lets you create the two percent that is worthy. I think this is more of a companion to Revit. Think of it as a designer you would hire for something very special. form•Z is that tool we use to model when we are dreaming up something great.

Now that I have figured out what form•Z is, it’s time learn this thing. There are plenty of free resources on the Internet to use — videos, detailed step-by-step instructions and so on. I decided to watch a tutorial video; there are several videos to watch. After watching the first one, I was off and running. Holy Moly! formZ is cool. There are some quirks, but as with any software, you learn them. Like Press Esc then ` to get select to work. It would be nice to press ESC or even ESC twice to get to the select tool. The other weird thing is, it’s not intuitive about when to click or when to drag when selecting or drawing something. But, none of this is too out of line.

I started by modeling a part from my 1967 Austin-Healey Sprite and I was able to model it fairly easily. After two tries and an hour, I created the part. I did need to search their online manual once to figure out something. Their manual needs help. Following is an example of the manual information I found after Googling “formz bolt.”

The manual was OK with telling you about the tool. It just lacks one key element: where to find the tool. I also found the online manual very difficult to navigate at first. There is a learning curve with the online help system. It looks like it’s a left over 2000s-style webpage in which the content is updated but not its style. I learned that videos were the way to go and, after seeing them, I was well on my way to drawing in form•Z.

After drawing the bonnet pin from my Austin-Healey Sprite I decided to tackle something architectural. I decided to model an organic form to divide a space; something industrial yet organic. I wanted to start by drawing blocks then use the new Sub Divisions surfaces tool to make my divider unique. I was able to create what I wanted. Unfortunately, though, form•Z keep blowing up. After the second try, I emailed tech support for a solution. They responded back stating that my graphics card was to blame. You see, I have a Mac Mini (late 2012) i7 with 16GB of RAM and an SSD Drive. I guess the Intel HD 4000 video card could not handle form•Z. You may want to verify that your computer meets all the requirements before investing in form•Z. Here is a link to the form•Z 8 system requirements on their website:http://www.formz.com/products/formz/formzSystem.html.

Not to fear, I decided to switch to the 15″ MacBook Pro Retina (mid-2014) even though I did not have the NVIDIA graphics card, just the lonely Intel Iris Pro graphics card. I was able to use form•Z without a single crash for the remainder of the weekend. I guess it pays to look at the system requirements and to ask for help every now and then.

I decided to start from scratch with my fantastic design. I wanted to model the design in form•Z and then see how it exported to Revit. I was very surprised how easy it was to model this design — much easier than in Revit. And creating this in a few moments after watching a single video tutorial is a testament to how easy it is to model complex parts in form•Z.

After modeling this part I decided to import it in to Revit. What I needed to do was to export it as a DWG file. Even though SAT file are supported by Revit, I found that the DWG method worked best. Here are the steps I took:

1. Export the model as a DWG.
2. Create a new millwork family in Revit. (This is a millwork item so for this reason I chose that family.)
3. Insert the DWG file into the family.
4. Change any of the properties you would like, including materials.
5. Insert that family into Revit.

Using that method I was able to use the model in Revit and even create sections.

Here are some of the other notable features that I found exceptional in form•Z.

Sections: form•Z has dynamic sections that allow you to section your model in multiple ways. These real-time sectioning tools are really worth the look.

form•Z Layout: This tool helps you draw your elevation, section and floor plan views you can use later in your construction documents. This tool makes quick work of turning that 3D model into 2D construction documents.

Realtime Rendering: form•Z’s realtime rendering engine is very well done and quite advanced. I can see using this tool during design meetings to have a realtime rendered walk-through of your design. It’s not just the material quality, it’s the whole package. Realistic shadows that can be smoothed, lighting, bump making and multiple sample features come together to bring you a rendering experience that is second to none. The speed even on my underpowered Mac Mini was acceptable; using a computer with a proper graphics card would be amazing.

Materials Library has also been reworked in form•Z. The feature I really like is the ability to group materials. Now you can create a chair group for example that contains the wood and fabric material and group them together in the library so you can keep everything organized and in its place.

Real-time Boolean features are really cool. form•Z automatically knows when you want to add or subtract a primitive while you draw it. As you stretch a box inside a box for example it automatically does a subtraction. Little touches like this make form•Z a pleasure to use.

Automatic Plane: When you start drawing a box on another box, for example, form•Z figures out that you are drawing on the side of the box and automatically adjusts the drawing plane for you. Genius.

Subdivision Surfaces is by far the coolest feature inside of form•Z. This advanced tools allows you to create organic shapes quickly and easily out of facetted primitives. Looking at the figure below, by simply converting the primitives in the chair you end up with a really cool organic design.

The facetted version of a chair model, or “cage,” prior to clicking on it with the Subdivision Create Tool	The Subdivision version of the model

Converting the primitives is just the start. There is also a slew of tools you can use to modify your subdivision model. This is where the power is. These tools include Grow Face, Grow Edge, Stretch, Offset Face, Offset Edge, Squeeze, Divide, Close and Bridge. Bridge, for example, creates a “bridge” between two different faces within a subdivision surface. Using bridge you can quickly fill in a gap between two models.

An example of a Bridge with the same number of segments by clicking on an edge using the Sequence option

form•Z is taking computer-based modeling to an entirely new level. If you have not experienced form•Z I recommend you give it a try this weekend. There are versions for the Mac as well as Windows. There are three different flavors to choose from: form•Z pro, form•Z jr and form•Z free. Here is a link to comparison chart to help you decide:http://www.formz.com/featureslist/FeatureComparisonChart.html. Don’t be afraid to learn new software, you never know how much you might like it.

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Additional Information

• www.formz.com – to visit the AutoDesSys web site

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About the Author

Bill Debevc is an expert in Autodesk software and Information Technology, currently specializing in AutoCAD, Revit, Bluebeam and private BIM cloud technologies. More…

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