more NURBS, network rendering, plugins, and much more...

Version 4.0 has made a variety of interface improvements to both the Macintosh and the Windows versions of the program. They include a new design for the tool icons, which is now the default, improved dialogs in both appearance and organization, and a few new Window tools and palettes. On the Macintosh side, the improvements appear even more dramatic when running native under OS X, which is supported in v. 4.0. It should also be noted that certain features previously supported by form·Z are temporarily disabled, when running under OS X. This is because certain 3rd party developers have not released yet their OS X versions of their products. These are Viewpoint export, Shockwave 3D export, and Microscribe digitizer support.

Most of the menus have been reorganized and the drafting menus are now distinct from the modeling, due to the modular structure introduced in v. 4.0. Among the most significant menu related enhancements, we should mention the newly introduced distinction between native and non-native file formats, the drastic reorganization of the Preferences environment, the new plotter oriented HPGL image format, and most notably the new network rendering capabilities.

Network rendering uses a "farm" of computers to render parts of an image or animation by splitting the task among a number of available machines. form·Z creates the model and sets up a scene and its rendering parameters that are then sent to a rendering server, which in turn distributes the task to the machines in the farm. When the rendering is complete, form·Z retrieves it from the server and assembles the parts into a single image or animation. All this at a fraction of the time it would have taken if the task was executed on a single machine. Another rendering oriented speed enhancement is the new multi-processor support for Macintosh machines, as has been available for Windows.

In the modeling environment, form·Z 4.0 has introduced 22 new tools, which include a new lofting operation, new blending and filleting, and more parametric editing. However, most of the new tools are in the area of NURBS curves and surfaces, called nurbz in form·Z. There are new ways to create nurbz and new ways to reconstruct, attach, merge, split, and trim NURBS surfaces and curves. The goal is to offer the complete range of NURBS operations and at least as many as any exclusively NURBS modeler has. The goal is also to do so at a state of the art level and without compromising the variety of other types of objects that have been the trademark of form·Z in the past. In addition to the new tools, v. 4.0 is also enhancing previously existing operations. Possibly the most notable of these is the new ability to include lights in symbol definitions.

While all the v. 4.0 enhancements are consistent with the tradition of form·Z over the last 10 years, which is to continuously increase its repertoire of effective 3D modeling tools, v. 4.0 also represents the beginning of a new direction, which will drastically impact the future evolution of the application. Interestingly, the ingredients of this beginning are not readily noticeable, as they comprise an extensive internal reconstruction of the application that has resulted in its ability to accept plugins and scripts. As a matter of fact, major portions of v. 4.0 currently run as plugins, but being operations that were already available in previous versions of the program, they do not represent new options. The gains will become apparent in the not too distant future, when both third parties and auto·des·sys will be developing additional capabilities and extensions that will be attached to form·Z as smoothly running plugins and scripts. In the meantime, another benefit that results from the new modular structure of form·Z is the optional choice of installing or not installing the full range of smooth modeling capabilities. While smooth modeling has been very much appreciated by a majority of our users, there is also a number of users that would rather work exclusively with facetted objects. These users can now do just that, while others can continue to enjoy smooth modeling.

In a way, form·Z 4.0 has broken the barriers imposed by the application’s own success. Having over the years evolved into an application with an unprecedented range of modeling capabilities, its internal code also grew to a size that made it impractical and inefficient to grow further. This limited our ability to add more tools and operations to the program. The introduction of a modular structure and open architecture, which allow to selectively decide what modules to run and to attach, has effectively overcome these limits and has opened bright new possibilities for the future of form·Z.

With form·Z 4.0 also comes the release of the first three plugins that represent new features: Sketch Rendering post-processes a rendering and applies a variety of expressionistic effects that may make an image appear as if it were done by free hand sketching; Point Cloud Re-engineering is able to thread arbitrary point cloud data into both facetted and NURBS structures; and STEP Translator offers the ability to efficiently import and export parametric objects and their controls. Demos of these plugins are available included in the form·Z Demo that can be downloaded from this site. (Go to Demo) This being the beginning, as soon as the plugin and script technology is released to the public, within an estimated 3-4 months after the release of v. 4.0, a variety of more plugins are expected to be developed, by both third parties and auto·des·sys. This should be no less than the maximum ability to customize and further enrich an already highly customizable and very rich 3D modeler. We are looking forward with great anticipation to see what form·Z users will do with all this new power they will be controlling.