No HELP for Form-Z Free user !

[CJTFORM-Z]

To all & FZ HQ,

The links appears to be broken with the Windows download for Form-Z free ver.9.0 with regards to the manual in the HELP pull down menu & when you right click on the icon tools. 

When will this be fixed & does this work for users with paid for versions ?

[¢hris £und]

The Manual is available in the paid version  There are going to be a number of things that the free version doesn't have.  And, I doubt the professional manual distinguishes what those are.

Manual for the Pro version

http://www.formz.com/manuals/formz9/formZ_Pro/WebHelp/formzpro.htm#t=01001_contents.html

 

Here is the link to a more general support page.

http://www.formz.com/fzsite1219/support/support.html

 

And Lastly, tech support will be far more responsive to an email.

support@formz.com

 

 

Cheers and welcome to formZ

[CJTFORM-Z]

1 hour ago, ¢hris £und said:

The Manual is available in the paid version  There are going to be a number of things that the free version doesn't have.  And, I doubt the professional manual distinguishes what those are.

Manual for the Pro version

http://www.formz.com/manuals/formz9/formZ_Pro/WebHelp/formzpro.htm#t=01001_contents.html

 

Here is the link to a more general support page.

http://www.formz.com/fzsite1219/support/support.html

 

And Lastly, tech support will be far more responsive to an email.

support@formz.com

 

 

Cheers and welcome to formZ

Hi Chris,
Thanks for your reply, I've been meaning to give Form-Z a test drive for sometime now, well, many many years in fact since looking at all the excellent videos from Matthew Holewinski & those were for Bonzai-3D (& FZ), so that shows my age I guess 🙂. But as noted before on this forum, I went the SketchUp direction instead for my architectural work, as my CAD software was too tedious for 3D works when that was needed.

I bailed out of SU in 2021, as they stopped the perpetual licensing, but still use SU now & then with my 21-ver. Anyway, I have tried FZ-free, but as noted, the help file links were broken & some links for the videos on specific tools when you right click for that menu were for ADOBE-FLASH files, but ADOBE retired that format.

I'm sure most new users would try the free version first to see if it was a good fit for their requirements & some of the version 8 FZ free videos by Matt showed these links worked fine back in the day. Therefore, it wasn't a very encouraging experience & I would've thought the free version would have more help to capture any potential new users. I did find the online manual, but it appears, as you say, to be a manual for all versions & wasn't too sure if there were any notes in that manual noting certain tools were only for the paid for versions, but could figure that out I guess. 

Not wanting to be online all the time, I downloaded the 8.5ver manual, but couldn't get this HTML version to work, it seems to be trying to link to the FZ website & flickered on & off screen. Not too sure why there's no PDF manual either. The old FZ website I see had pdf manuals, but up to version 6 with a wealth of other info.

Although that experience wasn't helpful, the UI & tools didn't seem to be a good fit for my architectural works as hoped for. So I think I'll not go much further with FZ for the time being.

[Tech]

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have an issue on our web server that is causing the formZ free manual pages to not load. As a temporary fix, we have re-enabled the previous iteration of the formZ free manual. This version covers almost all of the functionality in the current version (although some of the graphics are not current). You can access The manual from the "Help" Pull down menu in form•Z free.  We are working on a permanent fix which we hope to have ready ASAP! If you need additional help, please email our support team (support@formz.com).

[CJTFORM-Z]

To all, (& thanks FZ-HQ 4 the update 👍)

Ok; I've not quite 'left-the-building' with FZ-free, I guess I'm not a FORM-Z lurka anymore 🤔

One item I did want to run over & may be this should've been on a separate post. Is that someone noted on the SU forum that they thought FZ wasn't a good fit for Architectural types, (such as me) as they've never seen any similar well executed Architectural plan drawings from FZ, even though FZ has in-house Architectural tools & SU doesn't.

Therefore, if there are any Architectural FZ experts on this forum, it would be good see some examples of this & even some advice to how FZ is used for this type of work.

I'm still learning ArchLine-Xp Pro in the meantime, however, the 2D tools are a little slow to use compared with DataCAD. For everyday bread & butter work, us Architectural residential types have a lot of alteration & extension works & this involves site measuring the existing building to enable the clients proposals to be conceived. This requires 2D plans/elevations etc to be drawn up first. Some 3D programmes seem to lack these 2D CAD-tools & this is why we see folks using more than one programme I guess. 

[¢hris £und]

CJT,

Interesting.   While I am not an architect, I would have to say that the vast majority of its users are.  What exactly their pipeline is, I cannot say.

The old 6.x version had an integrated 2D environment.  Since 7.x it got split into its own app and somewhere along the line dimensioning tools were introduced into the 3D environment.  As I understand, many people would like the Draft/Layout to be improved.  Since, I do not need drafts very often, I do not know what these issues are.  When I do need drafts, it works fine for me.  I only wish it had the python scripting, as I would like to automate some tasks.

One thing of note; ADS has some how made an arrangement (we don't really know the details) with Power CADD.  From what I understand, people who use it, absolutely love it.  Up to now, it has been a Mac only application.  Should ADS integrate anything of it into formZ, hopefully they will, I doubt these additions would be Mac only. ADS has historically kept the Mac and the PC versions on par with each other.  However, I wouldn't expect any such changes until a major version update.  Maybe fZ10 ?   ADS is typically pretty tight lipped on future versions.  It has been noted that changes made by Apple has slowed development down. Both for PowerCADD and fZ for Apples new hardware.  It would make sense that ADS solve issues there first, prior to any release.

Any way, Good Hunting.

 

¢hris £und

[Theo]

I have used formZ for my architectural work since the late 1990’s and when it came to modeling, I have always found it fast, accurate and reliable.  Regarding the question about creating 2D drawings with formZ, in the past I used formZ’s drafting component to create anything from schematics to final construction documents, as carrying content from 2D to 3D and vice versa made things fast, clean and fairly easy.  The drafting module had some limitations with its text editing, dimensioning, annotating and hatching tools, but at that time I did not find them prohibitive, plus I expected that these would eventually improve.  As this did not happen, eventually I had to switch to a different solution for drafting.

Personally I would like to see formZ doing everything that it is supposed to do in modeling and drafting, without any flaws.  There is no point to include tools and features in any software package, if these will not work properly.  And as for the free version of the software, perhaps its purpose and content could be reconsidered as part of a broader strategy in making formZ popular again among professionals.

[CJTFORM-Z]

Hi Chris & Phanos,

Thanks for your replies & insights on this subject, its most appreciated.

I did take note of the forum post with PowerCADD, this would make FZ a very rounded tool for 2D/3D for my architectural works as I can see on PowerCADD's website/forum, (http://www.engsw.com/products/powercadd/) the architectural plans by their users are very capable & professional looking & as noted before, I hope some FZ architectural users, will share the same on this forum.

So if PowerCADD were to merge into FZ, that would make it very attractive & hopefully no need to use any other CAD programme.

I also note FZ's Draft Layout tool for drawing sheet management is only available for FZ-Pro users. This would be needed for 2D architectural plans extraction, so this also would be good to see how FZ (architectural) users are using this tool. I assume version 9 is very similar to version 8.5, not too sure what has been updated though. It appears to be a separate programme but launched within FZ-Pro. I posted a note on this forum about FZ-Layout sometime ago, as wondered if FZ-Layout would ever be available as a separate purchasable item, as this would assist FZ-jr/free users with a complete experience or perhaps a free version with limitations, (no dynamic link may be !). 

Form.Z Layout Version 8.5 video tutorial link:-

 

[Des]

99% of my work for many many years has been in architecture and my main tool by far is FormZ. In fact many architectural firms who use Acad, SketchUp and Revit hit a brick wall (in my experience) and sometimes need help solve their problems with their designs (modelling and rendering). All of those times I have solved their problems with FormZ (I use the pro version).

I have confidence in this software and while it has some quirks there is always a way round. I find Fz to be super fast and reliable. It runs on Mac and PC and is compatible with multiple file types. It can export perfectly well to TwinMotion, Maxwell, Vray and others.

I most definitely would highly recommend that you continue your exploration with FormZ and see what it has to offer. The Free version is highly throttled back from the Pro version and does not do smooth modelling, but have a look at the comparison chart anyway. http://www.formz.com/fzsite1219/support/FeatureComparisonChart.html

You can also try the demo version of FormZ Pro to see for yourself and if you need built models to play with let me know and I'll send you some.

Whatever you see on YouTube of FormZ still applies as far as I can see. There are some nice tricks here http://www.formz.com/fzsite1219/manuals/TnT/index.htm#t=Front_Page.htm

Post here if you need advice and techniques.

 

Des

 

 

Edited February 26, 2023 by Des