Yeah I agree. I looked into Bonzai when they first announced it. It's like Sketchup on steroids. The "push-pull" concept unlike in Sketchup, is actual boolean operations being calculated every time, so it's seems to be more of a real solid modeler.

While bonzai3d is pretty cool I can see why it's parent program FormZ never became an industry standard.. Its one of the first 3D modeling programs I explored on a mac not impressed at all.

I do not compare as regards the precise modeling, but

like I said ...:

what is beautiful is:
[COLOR="Red"]their communication[/COLOR]
[COLOR="Lime"]their video tutorials,[/COLOR]
[COLOR="DarkOrange"]their graphic quality and usability of their users manuals,[/COLOR]
[COLOR="Cyan"]opengl fluidity in real time during handling.[/COLOR]

SharkFX could learn, their users manuals has not changed since 4 years

Antoine

This is a screenshot of Bonzai3D (it took 3 hours to download!!!!)

In all fairness, Shark and ViaCAD have very similar splash-screens to Bonzai at startup. And, Shark does look at little better (tidy), still both are not Cocoa (like Rhino, C3D, Cheetah and Sketchup)

I'm no expert but I think with regard Shark, the Cocoa argument may be a bit of a red herring ! I think the memory management is Cocoa modern, as are the other elements that need to be. I'd be interesting in Tim's comments on this.

Adobe - that's a different story - they still seem to be still clagging stuff onto their 1994 code .. and it shows

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...laynext_from=PL&index=12

You can see some of this in SharkFX 7 already.

Try the extrude tool.(see pic)

That was never intended.

- Steve

You have 2d drawings/dimensions in Bonzai, but you asked about "Model to sheet". Does sketchup have that?


- Steve

I see that they have added tools for merging/blending curves/surfaces. Looking quite good up to now (no error messages)

Certainly worth more of my time to play.

Very quick example of merging/blending surfaces:-


http://dc190.4shared.com/downlo...72843/488cf6a8/blend.mov


- Steve

Very interesting Surface Tool!!

For what it is worth, I use both SharkFX & FormZ all the time, and in partnership with each other (mostly exchanging data through either SAT fro 3D & DWG for 2D).

Each has its strengths & weaknesses, and my toolbox would be dramatically weaker without either of them. There are some things I just would not tackle in one, that is easily accomplished in the other and vice versa. In general, Shark allows me to model much faster and easier, while Z allows much greater file organization and rendering as projects get larger.

It will be interesting to see how much more time I spend in Z when it is updated to 7 with all of the interface improvements from Bonzai.

Regarding bugs & stability, in my experience, FormZ is one of the more stable and bug free programs out there. Shark, while not bug free, continues to make progress and is more than stable enough for me.

Regards,

Gary