CJTFORM-Z Posted September 2, 2020 Share Posted September 2, 2020 1 hour ago, Alan Cooper said: CJT, the support at Form Z is very good and certainly dedicated. I sent a question only today and within a few hours received a detailed reply including some good news about improvements coming along in v9. So what I am suspecting, is that the small nucleus is keeping their head down, gradually improving it without taking on too many distractions, so that when they feel it is ready, they will go for it in a much bigger way. So as usual, we will need to let patience continue for the moment. Hope that helps and is some relief. It would be nice to hear that from the horse’s mouth so to speak for potential new users (me). Their version 9 promo video, as noted on another post, was very poor indeed with lots of sound issues that made it difficult to sit through & get enthused, that was five months ago. Why this hasn’t been pulled by now & a replacement made has me scratching my head. I think I’m going to go with the full BIM CAD programme that I’ve been looking at in the meantime, https://www.archlinexp.com/ they also provide great support & have plenty of new video learning tutorials. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hugo Posted September 2, 2020 Share Posted September 2, 2020 Or... https://www.bricsys.com/en-intl/bim/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
setz Posted September 5, 2020 Share Posted September 5, 2020 I've been considering making videos for FZ for a long time now. I love FZ and I have a lot of tips and tricks I could share. The things holding me back are that I have zero experience in video production, and poor voice and camera presence lol. (That's not me in the avatar.) For now, as an alternative to videos there is a great resource on FZ's website for Tips and Tricks: http://www.formz.com/fzsite1219/manuals/TnT/index.htm#t=Add_and_fill_out_Title_Block_templates_to_Layout_documents.htm graham_g, bbuxton, ZTEK and 1 other 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJTFORM-Z Posted September 6, 2020 Share Posted September 6, 2020 11 hours ago, setz said: I've been considering making videos for FZ for a long time now. I love FZ and I have a lot of tips and tricks I could share. The things holding me back are that I have zero experience in video production, and poor voice and camera presence lol. (That's not me in the avatar.) For now, as an alternative to videos there is a great resource on FZ's website for Tips and Tricks: http://www.formz.com/fzsite1219/manuals/TnT/index.htm#t=Add_and_fill_out_Title_Block_templates_to_Layout_documents.htm Hi Setz, I often see video tutorials for other CAD/Design programmes being produced by Re-sellers or keen users, but little of that for FZ. However, I did find some intro preview videos for a paid for course by Evan Troxel back in 2017 as avertised on the Form-Z website under the right hand pull down menu: SUPPORT then TRAINING. FZ HQ also state they offer training, but not too sure if anyone uses it at $125/per.hr ? I guess any FZ videos with or without voice overs will assist, given FZ HQ aren't bothering to promote FZ ver.9.00 in this way. Short 'Coffee-Break' type videos lasting 5mins or less I've found to be most helpful. The software to do this (record-your-screen) can be free & once recorded there are similar video editing programmes to fine tune or add instructive text or pointers etc. I've seen some of these TIPS+TICKS pop up from time to time, but did realise they were all listed in one place, so this is a good resource for uses indeed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AsOne Posted September 7, 2020 Share Posted September 7, 2020 https://getmethod.teachable.com/p/formz-fundamentals Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Cooper Posted September 7, 2020 Share Posted September 7, 2020 CJT, the BIM package you point out indeed looks impressive for an architect. As a furniture designer, my needs are more modest. As for Form Z, we need someone to step back into Matthew Holewinski's big shoes for sure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SJD Posted September 7, 2020 Share Posted September 7, 2020 I think online tutorials are essential for the survival of any software package these days however 'amazing' the app may be. I learnt the old way, as many of you here I imagine, from reading through the manual, trial and error, experimentation etc. because online resources didn't exist for anyone back in the day. Expensive face to face training was the only option then. That's all changed and If potential buyers cannot quickly evaluate a packages potential by seeing evidence of what it's capable of and how to use it they will quickly move onto the competition. The fact most of FZ's tutorials are over 7 years old is laughable and would put me off straight away if I were starting out again. I was looking to expand my own knowledge of FZ and get into more asset based modelling and sub division surfaces but became increasing frustrated at the complete lack of any meaningful tutorials. I've since moved to Modo - sure, it's a bit of a learning curve but it's been made a heck of a lot easier by using the wealth of high quality teaching material out there. I've learnt more in 3 months than I ever did in 20 years of using FormZ. snow 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bo Atkinson Posted September 7, 2020 Share Posted September 7, 2020 My favorite video type is indeed very short, just enough to demonstrate one tool action, or one trick in that one-video, all-alone, and the demo should also include views of which buttons, menus or dialogs are relevant and any special key words describing references, if any. Many of such videos could be listed and linked on one webpage, with an "open source" style and disclaimer, because 20 videos on one key word might pile up, so that an ideal moderator ought to re-title videos on that one link page, to zero in on each video particular. I recently began looking at Rhino videos where countless users post linked videos of various lengths and of personalized interests, and this spans many fields of endeavors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJTFORM-Z Posted September 7, 2020 Share Posted September 7, 2020 7 hours ago, Alan Cooper said: CJT, the BIM package you point out indeed looks impressive for an architect. As a furniture designer, my needs are more modest. As for Form Z, we need someone to step back into Matthew Holewinski's big shoes for sure. Hi Alan, Understood, ArchLine-XP is impressive & has lots of tools for architectural types like me. In your field of work, they do have some specific tools for interior design & I believe some basic tools to help with furniture design, although perhaps not as advanced as FZ. Anyway FYI, I found the two YOUTUBE VIDEOS specific to this, see below:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=LthbSFiweJg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM_WB5fLk34&feature=emb_logo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Cooper Posted September 7, 2020 Share Posted September 7, 2020 Thanks CJT. I took a look and have also seen others by those two guys. I appreciate they are not presenting in their first language but to be honest they are probably not really doing that software justice, so slow paced, whereas Matthew's FZ tutorials raced on at a great pace so the learning curve was great as it is better to watch and re-watch rather than keep fastforwarding because time is marching on and they are not covering much tuition in the time. There are certainly a few features which could be useful, but I love the simplicity of FormZ, have lots of custom keyboard shortcuts set, need to use screen-tools very little and like the easy topographical control of FZ especially as most of my work is orthogonal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJTFORM-Z Posted September 7, 2020 Share Posted September 7, 2020 23 minutes ago, Alan Cooper said: Thanks CJT. I took a look and have also seen others by those two guys. I appreciate they are not presenting in their first language but to be honest they are probably not really doing that software justice, so slow paced, whereas Matthew's FZ tutorials raced on at a great pace so the learning curve was great as it is better to watch and re-watch rather than keep fastforwarding because time is marching on and they are not covering much tuition in the time. There are certainly a few features which could be useful, but I love the simplicity of FormZ, have lots of custom keyboard shortcuts set, need to use screen-tools very little and like the easy topographical control of FZ especially as most of my work is orthogonal. Yes, the friendly chit-chat is o.k. but a tad protracted at times, still good though for two Hungarian chaps from Budapest. One person shorter focussed demo's generally assist better with attention spans. I note a lot of videos on FZ YOUTUBE channel range from under 10 minutes to others around 40 minutes plus. The most popular, (some years ago now...13y) has 101K hits on 3D printing, lasting 2.22 mins, the next one, equally old, (8y) on, Discover Fz Parametric modeling, has 73k hits of 44 mins duration. So people do seem to view these forms of learning material, FZ-HQ just need to find someone like Matthew Holewinski for a re-boot sooner than later, like others have said on this forum. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Cooper Posted September 7, 2020 Share Posted September 7, 2020 Budapest, having a long history in CAD could even be the place to find a recruit! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJTFORM-Z Posted September 7, 2020 Share Posted September 7, 2020 2 hours ago, Alan Cooper said: Budapest, having a long history in CAD could even be the place to find a recruit! Yes, Graphisoft part of the Nemetschek group are one of those high end players with ArchiCAD & the group also has, AllPlan & VectorWorks to name a few, another world indeed. However, given some time has lapsed since the release of FZ-ver.9.0. I don't think FZ-HQ appear to be interested in producing new video tutorials to assist with any new sales. Like you noted before, its sad to see such a capable product wallow under the radar for such a long time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Cooper Posted September 7, 2020 Share Posted September 7, 2020 2 hours ago, CJTFORM-Z said: Yes, Graphisoft part of the Nemetschek group are one of those high end players with ArchiCAD & the group also has, AllPlan & VectorWorks to name a few, another world indeed. However, given some time has lapsed since the release of FZ-ver.9.0. I don't think FZ-HQ appear to be interested in producing new video tutorials to assist with any new sales. Like you noted before, its sad to see such a capable product wallow under the radar for such a long time. Or maybe they would be interested, but it is taking a long time to find just the right talent to execute it, as well as waiting for V9 to be fully tuned...which is sensible. I believe they are taking a slow and steady approach and patience will eventually deliver our expectations. A small business can be easier to keep control of and develop smoothly, I can identify with that. ¢hris £und 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJTFORM-Z Posted September 7, 2020 Share Posted September 7, 2020 1 hour ago, Alan Cooper said: Or maybe they would be interested, but it is taking a long time to find just the right talent to execute it, as well as waiting for V9 to be fully tuned...which is sensible. I believe they are taking a slow and steady approach and patience will eventually deliver our expectations. A small business can be easier to keep control of and develop smoothly, I can identify with that. I'm sure they have staff that could do this with ease already, afterall, they state one to one online training on their website, so recording new material should be viable now ? I thought FZ-ver.9 was fully complete & on sale as I type, not quite understanding the 'fully tuned' comment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Cooper Posted September 8, 2020 Share Posted September 8, 2020 6 hours ago, CJTFORM-Z said: I'm sure they have staff that could do this with ease already, afterall, they state one to one online training on their website, so recording new material should be viable now ? I thought FZ-ver.9 was fully complete & on sale as I type, not quite understanding the 'fully tuned' comment. I would say that one-to-one training is not necessarily the same as presentation-quality demonstation, example: others have already given criticism of a recent demonstration (which I actually thought was perfectly adequate for the purpose of explaining some new capabilities). As for the fully tuned remark, this sort of software is highly complex hence 9.0, 9.1,9.2 etc where there will be fixes and added features. Many software developers first put out a 'beta' as you will be aware, and some would argue that the full software is released too early, possibly to keep a schedule-promise which may have been exceeded already, but after several version points along the way there will become a point where most fixes have been made and that is what I mean by 'fully tuned'. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SJD Posted September 8, 2020 Share Posted September 8, 2020 FZ Tech/ADS have openly admitted that marketing is not their forte and decent quality, up to date tutorials (along with some 'inspirational' videos of their software's selling points) are a crucial part of any marketing campaign. The first thing I look at when considering any software is the gallery, and without wishing to cause offence, most of the work in FZ's gallery looks pretty poor and dated. There is hardly any work in there that truly shows off it's capability (and maybe decent tutorials would have helped this). It seems crazy that, after all the effort that has clearly gone into developing the software, that the marketing side has not been addressed. And in a world where the competition grows ever more fierce (and FZ's already small user base seems to be shrinking) I'd say that was business suicide. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Cooper Posted September 8, 2020 Share Posted September 8, 2020 37 minutes ago, SJD said: FZ Tech/ADS have openly admitted that marketing is not their forte and decent quality, up to date tutorials (along with some 'inspirational' videos of their software's selling points) are a crucial part of any marketing campaign. The first thing I look at when considering any software is the gallery, and without wishing to cause offence, most of the work in FZ's gallery looks pretty poor and dated. There is hardly any work in there that truly shows off it's capability (and maybe decent tutorials would have helped this). It seems crazy that, after all the effort that has clearly gone into developing the software, that the marketing side has not been addressed. And in a world where the competition grows ever more fierce (and FZ's already small user base seems to be shrinking) I'd say that was business suicide. It would be interesting to know what ADS's current vision is at this particular time. I can see an argument for plodding on with tweaking this new version for a little longer, until it is 'ready' for a big marketing thrust. Launching such a thrust to early might be suicide, but on the contrary, finalising preparations in advance of such a launch is prudency. I think I need to leave this conversation now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SJD Posted September 8, 2020 Share Posted September 8, 2020 36 minutes ago, Alan Cooper said: It would be interesting to know what ADS's current vision is at this particular time. I can see an argument for plodding on with tweaking this new version for a little longer, until it is 'ready' for a big marketing thrust. Launching such a thrust to early might be suicide, but on the contrary, finalising preparations in advance of such a launch is prudency. I think I need to leave this conversation now. I can't recall ADS ever having marketed themselves with any conviction and seem to have been happy relying on word of mouth etc. That approach has developed a small but very loyal following - FZ Tech were always present on this forum and excellent at responding to users questions but I rarely see them now and these forums are very quiet compared to how they used to be. I really want to invest more time and money into the software but I'm not sure it's worth spending it on something that sadly seems to be in decline Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJTFORM-Z Posted September 8, 2020 Share Posted September 8, 2020 2 hours ago, Alan Cooper said: I would say that one-to-one training is not necessarily the same as presentation-quality demonstation, example: others have already given criticism of a recent demonstration (which I actually thought was perfectly adequate for the purpose of explaining some new capabilities). As for the fully tuned remark, this sort of software is highly complex hence 9.0, 9.1,9.2 etc where there will be fixes and added features. Many software developers first put out a 'beta' as you will be aware, and some would argue that the full software is released too early, possibly to keep a schedule-promise which may have been exceeded already, but after several version points along the way there will become a point where most fixes have been made and that is what I mean by 'fully tuned'. The presentation video showing the recent (5 months ago !) Fz-ver9.0 let it self down due to sound issues, I think thats the main reason for the criticism, so whoever it was presenting it, your ok with me, just sort out the sound with new bite size vids & all will be good............we're not looking for OSCAR nomInees.. :-) Fully tuned ? ... Yes, I now understand, so the core version is what it is, with bug fixes or whatever popping up now & then, a normal situation with most software. So unless there are some major issues, I wouldn't hold back on new advertising material, the vids are a must. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SJD Posted September 8, 2020 Share Posted September 8, 2020 just been browsing 'FormZ fundamentals' by Evan Troxel and I must say it looks really good but $300 is a no no for me. If only ADS would hire someone of that standard to produce a short series of industry focussed videos - it would be an excellent selling tool (and of course, invaluable to the existing community) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJTFORM-Z Posted September 8, 2020 Share Posted September 8, 2020 1 hour ago, SJD said: just been browsing 'FormZ fundamentals' by Evan Troxel and I must say it looks really good but $300 is a no no for me. If only ADS would hire someone of that standard to produce a short series of industry focussed videos - it would be an excellent selling tool (and of course, invaluable to the existing community) Hi SJD, I just did the same, there appears to be quite an extensive list of vids, with some free-bee teasers on each section. I was thinking, I wonder if FZ-HQ could do a deal with Evan Troxel, buy up his vids & offer them to the Fz community ? As they're quite old (but still relevant), I'm gussing not much traffic to his website, therefore, Evan may be open to some kind of offer to suit all. He may be open to doing some updated ones, just a thought. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SJD Posted September 8, 2020 Share Posted September 8, 2020 yes, it would be nice if something could be worked out... off topic slightly, but I found a nice interview from 2007 with Chris Yessios. Hope it's ok to share the link interview Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smarttec Posted September 9, 2020 Share Posted September 9, 2020 13 hours ago, SJD said: yes, it would be nice if something could be worked out... off topic slightly, but I found a nice interview from 2007 with Chris Yessios. Hope it's ok to share the link interview Yes but Chris and Alexandra have been gone for a long time. The current management does not discuss their future and it's been a while since there has been any real news other than partial updates. Does anyone know more? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Cooper Posted September 12, 2020 Share Posted September 12, 2020 (edited) Forgive my inexperience in making video presentations but here is one I have just made for you showing an example of why I like the simplicity of FormZ for bespoke furniture designing. https://youtu.be/TFdgbqeEFw4 I would also like to point out that there are other ways to achieve a similar result. For example I could have used the Modify/Difference (boolean subtract) tool. Edited September 12, 2020 by Alan Cooper Added information Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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