A question about FoemZ

[roham13]

Hi guys.I am an architect and I have just download FormZ demo.I know 3d studio Max and AutoCAD. I am just curious about FormZ. Can anyone help me if it is useful for my field of job, or maybe is there anything special about FormZ for architects.

Thanks in advance

[BrianKitts]

Usefull.....yes, optimal.....ehhh maybe

 

I came out of a college in Ohio where our instructor had a hand in the development of the software so likewise it was taught heavilly at our school. Some people swear by it and call it an all in one program because it has a drafting and a modeling side. As well as a built in render engine. Personally I don't think the drafting side is very strong, nothing compared to autocad, but you can import and export to almost any common program. The modeling side is great but the rendering is lacking. Its a good solid modeler, for architecture its great massing up models and basic forms. So thats exactly how I use it. As for rendering its not there yet in comparisson to max, basically for the reason that there are no third party plug-ins available for it such as maxwell, brazil, and v-ray.

 

Form_z has the potential to catch up in the race, with their last release I believe they finally opened up for external scripting which will in time lead to the ability for third party rendering engines. As another note, when they jumped from version 3.9.5 to 4.0 they shot the program right in the foot re-doing the coding and trying to optimize it. In all honesty.... the new versions don't work near as well as 3.9.5, theres more functions available but the program isn't anywhere near as solid as it used to be. It's more prone to crashing and the screen refresh isn't as quick. I still work everyday in version 3.9.5 and only keep 5.5 on my system for downgrading and models that we recieve from outside our office.

 

As a work flow, I do most of my furniture modeling and small details in max and model all my main architecure in form_z and save the file out to a dwg, then use the dwg-link in max to import the file to max. That way I can make any changes later in form_z and just save out a new dwg, and use the link to update in max. From there light and texture and render our with v-ray.

 

hope this sheds a little light on your question

[mbr]

I agree with Brian. FormZ is far superior to Max for architectural modeling, but Max is great for small furniture pieces.

 

There rendering/animation have been the most limiting aspects to it. It looks like v6 will address both of these issues. I am anxious to see if Final Render (I use fR and max for renderings/animations) or VRay port their new releases to FMZ (like Maxwell did, although everyone agrees Maxwell isn't worth the pain).

 

If you are using it for a design tool, it is the best I've used. Heard good things about Rhino, but most people use FormZ, then Max of final presentation renderings.

[roham13]

Thank you for your quick reply.so you think that this is a good program for the conceptual design and also this level of design and for the post development (I mean for the exact drawings and final render) I should still stick to Auto CAD and 3D studio MAX?

[Trick]

I use Max and Lightwave for rendering, Modo for organic modeling and FormZ for abstract things like architecture, environments and furniture. It's still version 3.6.8 because I get tears in my eyes when I see the redraw speed in versions 4+ on larger models. They promised better since years, but it hasn't happened yet. As a viz-artist I certainly would not work in FormZ as an all-in-one program. I really hope the new animation features in v6 will not kill stability.