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Craig  
#1 Posted : Thursday, May 12, 2016 11:54:37 PM(UTC)
Craig

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I removed Form Z from my CAD/modelling investigations because of the price I saw displayed a number of months ago, but now they have dropped it to around $1000.
Since the price drop I have been taking a serious look at it and the software seems to be in a league of its own at that price level.
Their sub-D tool is probably the strongest of them all and would rival Creo at a fraction of the price, the software seems incredibly stable and I watched a Boolean operation with so many parts that most programs would have struggled with.

Anybody have any experience with Form Z?

Edited by user Thursday, May 12, 2016 11:55:30 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Jean-Francois Jacques  
#2 Posted : Monday, May 16, 2016 11:08:03 AM(UTC)
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Craig, long time ago I tried to use Form Z. Yes I tell "tried" ...I hated is UI and It was more oriented for Architecture... but the UI for rendering was very good. Today I don't know where the software is ?? and how is the power ? With comparison with Shark I definitely no temptation.
METEORE DESIGN / KEKO Stand
Jean-Francois Jacques, Industrial Designer
SharkCad Pro V14 B1653
Platform macOS 14 Sonoma
Craig  
#3 Posted : Monday, May 16, 2016 11:16:48 AM(UTC)
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Interesting, thanks.

I haven’t tried it myself but have watched their videos and it looks very good, Shark and Form Z are actually quite similar they are both proper solid modellers with surfaces and sub-d.
I must admit that their UI is a bit weird but they seem to have the full package just as Shark has.
GARLIC  
#4 Posted : Tuesday, May 17, 2016 12:52:57 AM(UTC)
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Some impressions:

the acis kernel is up2date r25 and the mathematics behind are very powerful,
the user interface is - imho - simply horrible since ages
the drafting part still needs quite a lot of improvement

just my 2cts
regards
Craig  
#5 Posted : Tuesday, May 17, 2016 4:12:59 AM(UTC)
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Thanks Garlic, seems to be that all CAD programs are works in progress, I witnessed some very angry customers over at TurboCAD a few nights back.
Form Z interface can be modified and from what I have seen on the demo they really have some nice features to make selecting different tools very easily.

If Shark's tools worked then I think Shark would be ahead of Form Z, but as it stands we have all the tools but most of them don't work, whereas there do not seem to be many issues of that happening with Form Z.
Their render and animation functions seem very stable and user friendly, don't know if they are using the graphics card for rendering but it would be interesting to find out.
GARLIC  
#6 Posted : Tuesday, May 17, 2016 5:46:43 AM(UTC)
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Thanks Craig:

I like to add to my former lines some more bits and pieces of information :::
Some nice tools can be found - as plugins - in the formZ LAB ,e.g. the Catenary Tool or Profile Builder with parametric control of the profile, shape and dimensions etc.,
really useful add-ons for the toolbox,

http://lab.formz.com/

regards
G
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Craig on 5/17/2016(UTC)
flatpack  
#7 Posted : Tuesday, May 17, 2016 10:06:02 AM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: GARLIC Go to Quoted Post
Thanks Craig:

I like to add to my former lines some more bits and pieces of information :::
Some nice tools can be found - as plugins - in the formZ LAB ,e.g. the Catenary Tool or Profile Builder with parametric control of the profile, shape and dimensions etc.,
really useful add-ons for the toolbox,

http://lab.formz.com/

regards
G




Sorry to jump into the conversation, but as one who has repeatedly tried out trial versions of FormZ since v7, I have to say I'm very impressed with the ability to easily explore countless shapes. Didn't know about the lab you just posted, but I see the Primitives collection is extremely useful.

What I don't like about it is that it feels like sketchUp instead of sharp crisp lines like you find in Shark. That's not necessarily a bad thing, I'm just not used to it.

Also I find that drafting in it is NOT easy like it is in Shark.

However the developers at AutoDesSys seem to take great pride in adding so many new tools constantly and each one has a nice dialog box to allow a wide breadth of modification.
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Craig on 5/17/2016(UTC)
Craig  
#8 Posted : Tuesday, May 17, 2016 2:27:18 PM(UTC)
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Form Z does not use GPU rendering either which I find strange, they do have a plug-in rendering engine that uses GPU. I can't understand why these companies are still using CPU rendering for their own render engines?

Flatpack I understand what you mean about Shark being crisp, I think that's what most of us were drawn to, Shark has a very easy on the eyes interface.
GARLIC  
#9 Posted : Wednesday, May 18, 2016 7:51:44 AM(UTC)
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Craig, did you try this formZ performance test ?

It might give you some good insight:
http://forums.formz.com/...w-fast-is-your-computer/

regards
G
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Craig on 5/18/2016(UTC)
Craig  
#10 Posted : Wednesday, May 18, 2016 1:46:15 PM(UTC)
Craig

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Thanks but those figures are not much good without a comparison test of the same file using the GPU. Interesting how an i7 3.4 ghz using Windows 7 beats the faster iMac 3.5 ghz by over 4 minutes!

Take a look at this link, you can change the top drop down list under benchmarks to CPU, eg GTX 780 TI = 70 seconds, i7 3 ghz = 264 seconds.
You have to hover over the blue bar to see the times. Very handy info to see how our graphics cards and processors perform, good to have if thinking about buying a new system. http://blenchmark.com/gpu-benchmarks
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GARLIC on 5/18/2016(UTC)
flatpack  
#11 Posted : Sunday, May 22, 2016 9:27:48 AM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: Craig Go to Quoted Post


Flatpack I understand what you mean about Shark being crisp, I think that's what most of us were drawn to, Shark has a very easy on the eyes interface.



I watched every single video from FormZ's site for the Pro version. Very impressive. Though it could never replace Shark for me, I find FormZ's tools highly sculptural and seem to allow very rapid ideation of super complex forms. Excellent for the creative process but definitely not for the technical precision of Shark/VC. I can't imagine using FormZ for creating manufacturing drawings. The few furniture manufacturers I know of whose designers use FormZ always use a second cad program to create the mfg detail drawings.

I'd be pleased if Shark v9 would start to include primitives like the spherical and polyhedron found in FormZ. Among other things..

*one thing I really liked about FormZ is the sheer speed of complicated operations. Have yet to encounter a long pause, freezing, spinning circle / thinking, or crashing.. Next I plan to try Rhino for mac.. though I've heard that it is very clunky compared to the directness of Shark.

Edited by user Sunday, May 22, 2016 9:30:16 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Craig  
#12 Posted : Sunday, May 22, 2016 10:06:54 AM(UTC)
Craig

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They are working on their model to sheet function, they do have one but from the discussions I have seen the users are requesting something more in line with mechanical manufacturing, the developer said it was high on their list.

I gave the free version a go and have been very impressed with how well it runs on both of my systems.
If Shark was bug free it would be hard to beat but as I have said before I think there is something wrong with the 64 bit architecture. If they get that and their customer service sorted Shark would be ahead.
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flatpack on 5/22/2016(UTC)
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