Des

9.2 ?

I have it running perfectly on one of my old Mac Pros (2008) with El Capitan (2015)

Good to know.. Thanks for the follow up Pobo

That's weird. Try playing with the OpenGL settings in the Preferences. There are two options, Enable Multi Threading & Use Advanced OpenGL. You could try turning them on or off but you have to re-open your project each time. I'm not sure if this will help but worth a bash..

That's right, if you select a large object (say a one piece encompassing wall), it will go to the middle as you say. So probably select a window for example on the wall you want in focus. It also works on faces (command select) as well. For doing external architectural work, I usually have my maxwell camera set to F10 (depending on the sun). That gives very little depth of field so you should be good to go with that. The higher the F stop number, the less light is let in so you may have to increase the shutter exposure (smaller shutter number). But that can always be changed after in Maxwell Render at render stage even after the render is complete, just hit refresh and re-save the render image.

Hi Tom, Regarding the focusing of the view for Maxwell, once I get out of Edit Cone of Vision and I'm back in the modelling window, I select a part of the model with which I want to be in focus and then go to Extensions>Maxwell Render>Focus Camera. The view doesn't change but the arrow is moved automatically to the object I want in focus. Only after that do I save the view.

Unfortunately no, it'll always try to snap to the line of view and the orbit. My way around it is to zoom right in with the mouse scroll into the eye point, even though it still snaps the movement in the 3d view is then minimal. It takes a while to get used to it but I find it works well. I have to use edit cone of vision a lot because most of my work is matching perspective to photos and it's great for fine tuning. I use a similar technique (sort of) to allanjl when I don't have to match a photo.

I'm afraid not, you will always have to save a new view. You can double click the saved view and alter the numeric settings, but that's just guesswork. Like you I end up with a load of views. If I have to make a small change to an existing saved view, I name it the same as the original with an "a". Then delete the original and rename the new by removing the "a". It is a little long winded but is solid. Also, when naming the view I use a system (as I have so many) like; "V3-4678-6000x4000-3pt" (ViewNo-PhotoNo-Size-PerpectiveType). The perspective type not with photo matching as they are always 3 point anyway. A long time ago the image size could be set inside the view parameters of the saved view along with some other options, I miss that. Tbh, it's not so bad so long as you have a good naming convention. Des

Another suggestion would be to open your Maxwell material editor (mxed), then select the Browser tab, in the Material Filters on the right, scroll down and select metal in the material type. Then loads of pre-made metal materials appear on the left. Select a similar one to the metal type you need, then import it. Go back to the editor tab and the material you selected is ready to edit. You can then replace the textures to suit (say your transparent image from earlier). It's a great place to start and there are hundreds for free.

Hi Tom, It's not really a decal, if you imagine a bear label or sticker, that's a decal. The technique you're using above is great for elements with none or close to no thickness such as mesh fencing, netting etc. So if your element will be seen as having thickness then modelling would be better. But regarding your question about the material, I'd make a metal material for Maxwell then just load the transparent image (alpha) you made into Opacity/Mask in the material layer. Then the visible lines will have the metal finish. Btw, you can do decals in Maxwell by using the stacking feature.

Hi Charles, I agree. The palettes seem to have a mind of their own sometimes. I've never seen that happening though, totally crazy. I would suggest emailing ADS (support) directly with your computer & software details. ADS don't seem to be active on this forum the way they were in the past but their email support is good. Let us know how you get on.. Des

I just tried this out and it's so cool. I did a little test using 3d Scanner App on my iPhone 12 pro of my sleeping dog beside me where I work. I don't think it's too bad considering I just used the low res setting for a few seconds. There were some triangles floating around but I used the separate tool and marque selected them and deleted. Make sure to turn up the Image Textures resolution (at least 2048 pixels) in Display Options. This is so much fun, thanks for posting Kim. Santa, you're being way too harsh, will you move on..

ok

Hi Burney, you could try the following to see if it helps. Turn off certain snaps, especially these; Snap to perpendicular, Snap to Intersection, Snap to Tangent. Turn Specular Factor to zero in shaded for all your materials. In the Display Options, turn off "Show line styles & weights", turn off "show Hatches" and reduce Image textures to say 512 pixels or lower. When you open the V7 file, save as V8, reopen in V8 and copy and paste wanted info into a new file, see if that helps. Smarttec is correct that the technology has moved on but you should still be able to operate at a reasonable speed. Des

Hi all, I just thought I'd post this to see what your experience is lately regarding our 3d modelling work being affect by the onslaught of BIM in architecture. I am definitely being affected as more architects are using the likes of Revit for more and more projects. As a result they are tending to do their 3d imaging in-house and are less reliant on 3d modellers. They also have many rendering engines to choose from with built-in assets like trees, planting and other entourage which are of a very high quality. Yes, they still require specialist work sometimes but it seems less frequent these days. I've never been a fan of this approach in architecture as I believe designs can be limited and more rigid, but I can see great improvements as the software (and the users for that matter) get better. In this part of the world there is a lot of work in the architectural field at the moment, but every single practice (both large and small) are now using Revit (mostly) exclusively and require people with that skill base. While I will always use FormZ for its amazing modelling abilities, but I think I will have no option but to go down the BIM route using Revit (the thought makes me wretch as I have tried it out before) and still use FormZ along side for when real 3d modelling is needed. To keep marketable at least. I'd love to hear what you all think... Des

Dpi is kind of irrelevant, it's the actual image dimensions which are important so I don't know why it's an option in the first place. I'm not having any problems with this in v9.1.0 on any of three machines. Try setting the pixel size instead of by size and resolution to see what happens? Otherwise I can't think of any other reason.

Yeah it was very good this year, although I'm glad the winning song won.. rocks not dead 😉

Just wondering if anyone has the same little problem I have. If I move an MXS (say a car or a tree) either as a single move or with copy selected all works fine. If I move an MXS and in the middle of a move I realise I have copy selected, so I toggle copy option off by hitting the option key, FormZ crashes. Its happened only a few times but on different jobs (files)and with different MXSs. Not a big deal but one to take note of. Des

Have you tried to email support@form.com? I find that they respond to emails every time. I use components all the time without problems (as long as I stick to my own criteria), but only in the 3d environment so I can't help in regards to Layout. Des

Thanks for sharing, I'm quite interested how they (M1 macs) would perform in our environment. I don't think that there will be any speed improvement when doing actual 3d modelling (just as long as it's not slower while running under Rosetta2), FormZ like other 3d softwares are only capable of running operations on single threads. Also, unless the software is optimised for the M1, there won't be a speed increase. There is a little article here of the M1 for cad & 3d users. It is promising that other 3d software companies have been quick to optimise for the M1, such as Maxon with Redshift. I think this is a sign that at least they have spotting the benefits of the M1 and have moved quickly. Others will follow and I hope FormZ does too (in my case Maxwell as well) and I believe AutoCad will be as well as Maya, and others such as Blender etc. Apples own software such as FinalCutPro run operations blazingly fast according to the web thingy and as others adapt and the chip evolves, it can only be beneficial to us all (there are even Twinmotion M1 tests on youtube). Can it compete with the nVidia in the future, that's the real question imho as I believe realtime rendering is becoming the norm.

Glad you got it sorted. Regarding the OS requirement and as mentioned in my last post, I did say that I was running the latest versions of Fz & Maxwell on one of my machines not using Big Sur. I only mentioned Big Sur as a requirement for FormZ because that's what AutoDessys say on this website in the system requirements for V9.1 while I was trying to think of a reason why your installation would not work.

Could be that you have GPU instead of CPU selected in the Maxwell render and Fire options, only Nvidia cards and CUDA supported I believe. Also, FormZ 9.1.0 requires Mac OS 11 (Big Sur). These could be contributing to your crashes although one of my machines (2013 iMac) is running 10.15.7 (Catalina) which seems to run Fz 9.1 with Maxwell 5.2 just fine (with GPU selection turned off of course). Hope this helps, Des

The option to use TM with FormZ has given me renued optimism. I still use Fz with Maxwell mostly but to be able to make animations so quickly is great. With regard to terrain modelling, l still use the terrain tool but occasionally I literally draw a flat plane (surface) in plan, convert it to a nurbs object with around 12 x 12 controls. then I show the controls and with snap turned off and perp to ref plane selected, I move the points so it pretty much matches the supplied contours. Then I slice and dice it for kerbs and paving etc. The beauty is that they retain their control points for further manipulation. I have even used a subdivision surface for landscape and can work very well. A thing to note is with TM you need a really good and large video card to get the quality. I'm limited to an iMac with 4gb vid ram so that reflects in the quality of my animations. They recommend a card of at least 16gb for good quality. D

Very nice image that and thanks for sharing your technique regarding the animation, I must try that! Have you tried Twinmotion yet? That might be an option to get animations in a matter of minutes. Although to get it as sharp as your image, you'd need a super duper graphics card.

There are a few ways to do this. 1) Go to TOP view and with centre snap on move it to it's new position. It will only move in the XY plane because you are in TOP view. 2) With 3D Delta selected in the coordinates, snap to the centre (top or bottom) of the object, move to it's new position and tab to the Z in coordinates and hit 0. It'll move without moving in the Z axis. 3) Start moving the object (snapping to wherever on the object), hold shift to snap it to a temporary guide along whichever axis (say the X axis). You may need to move it again in the Y axis the same way. You can also draw guides and points which you can snap to as well but switching views is also very handy depending on the object. And using the "Perpendicular To Reference Plane" toggle (command) while in the move tool is also good. I tend to leave open the "Snap Options" palette where I mostly have snap to ghosted & stick to edges selected. These come to mind for me but I'm sure others will chime in with alternative methods. Des