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

I only managed to install the latest update on my machines a few days ago but so far I'm happy. Hidden Line display is much better with a live update to the image as it calculates. Very handy on a large model to see the progress. Des

Ok, I spoke too soon. Although the Hidden Line process works fine and displays correctly on the screen, when I export to a raster format like jpg, tiff, png, targa, bmp, they all come out black. The only one that exports to an image is PDF but the image size is not what I set up the image in Image Options to be.

I agree with what Chris & Justin said above, the extra hardware you mentioned will not help with importing of CAD files. Usually in my experience the problems are with the cad file itself. I get autocad files from different architects on a daily basis and rarely have problems importing them. But when I do, it's always because of the bloated nature of the file, usually caused by the massive amounts of fills, hatches, trees etc. While working for a while on Revit (ugh) last year I had similar problems bringing some dwg files into that as well. The laziness of some who create files like this is astounding to me when I import these files and see the stupid amounts of layers usually caused by copying and pasting from one drawing to another over and over (got one the other day with over 800 layers!). Anyway, if I get one that is causing me problems, usually a phone call asking the creator to save a copy of the file and just copy and paste the visible entities into another file, purge and audit. You are probably only interested in the geometry anyway. The biggest culprits in my experience are the landscape designers (sorry guys!) just because of the nature of their cad files with massive amounts of trees, shrubbery and general fills.

Caught by the short & curlies... 😆

I agree. I use these tools frequently myself when sharing my screen on video meetings. The feet should disappear after the mouse button is pressed. I get around it by using my 3dconnexion controller which works great once practiced.

Bravo ¢£ 👏

Try "allow snap to original" in the move options

The point I was making is that we shouldn't be making the comparisons that are so often with other packages on this forum. My apologies if that wasn't clear or if the prices I mentioned are not correct ( I did a quick google search). Anyway, I think that the likes of those other 3d packages are exorbitant for people (freelancers) in the arch viz industry. I certainly could not afford to be paying such large amounts per year for something like revit and max. FormZ does a lot for what we pay for (for me anyway), but I see others here constantly comparing it to other softwares which cost a lot more and have an inferior modelling tool set imho. Yes, some may do other things better than FormZ (drafting) but for me it's 3d tools are incredible for what I pay for (as an all round 3d modelling package anyway). Anyway, I've caused this to go off on a tangent with my previous post by making comparisons by which I was trying to make the point of not making comparisons, so my bad. 😕 Ok, I'm confused now... More coffee...

Me too.. 👍

I chose FormZ many years ago because it was on the mac and thought it was the best out of a pile of other software I had worked on. Guess what? I would still choose FormZ over the rest even with it's quirks and shortcomings. I continue to make a living from it as my main package and would recommend it to anyone who wants to get into the 3d modelling business. I don't have most of the issues others have such as crashing and it's not because I'm an IT expert, 'cos I'm not. In my long time experience, I have found crashing to be caused from imported bad geometry and the such. Bad imported geometry is not necessarily caused by the software it was created on but mostly the creator. I agree that the interface needs some work in FormZ, mainly pallets arrangement etc., but I actually like the look and feel/icons etc., call me what you want. I'm actually excited about the dark mode in the next iteration. valthewu, I think you think you're just trying to help but tbh I think you are just making this forum a depressing place (sorry, most of your 10 posts have been negative). We'd all love to see FormZ doing well and competing with the big boys especially since we've invested in Fz (Just to point out FormZPro is a LOT less expensive than other software it's being compared to on this forum, I mean C4D is $3500, Max $1545 per year and without add ons!, Revit $2310 per year, SU $695 but isn't a patch on Fz). But I think ADS has done remarkably well considering who they compete with. I think the future is brighter for FormZ with the Twinmotion integration (along with the existing Vray & Maxwell). Everyones opinion is important here, but lets be more positive about FormZ, it has a hell of a lot more positives than negatives. Lets do more of sharing 3d modelling knowledge, WIPS etc. (if I was considering Fz as a new user, I wouldn't buy it based on all the moaning about it here which obviously doesn't help marketing). ADS have given us this forum for our own benefit to learn etc., not as a rooftop to shout from. Dezzz 😉

Hi all, I'm really busy these days so I will need help modelling due the volume involved on multiple jobs. So I'm looking for someone to knock out clean, well structured layered models in metric. Architectural type layering. Someone trustworthy and experienced in FormZ and doesn't cost the earth. FormZ Version 9 files only. No rendering required, just bare models (may change in the future). Truthfully available. Paypal account needed (for obvious reasons). Email me at "des AT objectpreviews DOT com" if you're interested in some work over the next couple of weeks. I look forward to hearing from you. Des

Hi all, Sorry to have to shut this down so quickly, I've had numerous contacts since posting. Thank you all for the interest and I'll reply to all the emails I received as soon as I can, please be patient. Rock on, Des

Yes, it got my attention too! I think this is going to be a perfect marriage. Time to get a computer with a big graphics card..

True, but I doubt you need any noob...

Thanks ZTEK for your detailed analysis, I've been watching this post for a while. The PDF is nice, and well laid out with nice clean lines, thickness's, hatching etc. Was the hatching generated in BricsCAD? It seems quite dense and might cause problems when printing but I'm sure that can be adjusted easily enough. I started back in the 80's drawing on tracing paper using varying pen thickness's to achieve this effect and I think you have managed to get the same feel (too many architects have lost this over the years imo). In fact I'm dismayed by the quality quite often of the lack of skill or the want to produce nice drawings these days, I receive drawings on a daily basis from designers that either don't work, are messy as hell and as a result are difficult to read. While I'm no longer required to produce drawings like this any more by choice (all my work is 3d imagery), it's still interesting to see. Query; the "reflected ceiling plan" is flipped as if one were looking up at the ceiling on your drawing. Is this a result of using a section of the plan with the "camera" looking up? In my experience a reflected ceiling plan is the same as the floor plan and not flipped over (like a mirror is held under the ceiling, hence 'reflected'). I had not heard of BricsCAD until this post, it looks very capable and the fact that it's for macs as well is great. I started on Vectorworks and PowerCADD back in the day. Des

This is my first project using FormZ to Twinmotion. It was done on an iMac 2020 with 4GB of video ram, so if I get a machine with a bigger & better video card I should get better quality. Sorry the buildings (boxes) are not architecturally award winning..😁 BaldonnellUnitCDE-low

Thanks for your comments guys. I'm working on another job at the moment. It's a small minimalist house surrounded with trees so I'll post that as well once I've finished. I think TM excels with the built in entourage libraries.

Thanks John! I was actually quite pleased with how easy it is to bring the FormZ model into TM. I exported the model in parts to make it easier when there were design changes. For example, I had layer groups in Fz for each building, the site, street lighting etc. So when I had to make a change to a building I just exported it to overwrite the asset and refreshed the import which means the rest of the model stays as it was in TM. Also I had used Maxwell for the stills but when I needed to go to TM I obviously had to place the trees again so I created a layer in Fz with small cubes where the trees were (Maxwell mxs references) and exported that into TM. Then I could place the trees in their proper places and turn off the tree placement cubes later. Here are a couple of the Maxwell stills..