Hello Forma users-
I’m a software engineer (not associated with Autodesk), and I've been working on an extension to the vegetation system in Forma. I’d appreciate anyone giving it a test drive and providing any feedback or ideas to take the extension further. I saw that Forma trees could be somewhat limited, so Thicket gives you a few more advantages when it comes to placing vegetation:
- Control color, height, width, and shape of a tree’s canopy and trunk.
- Place trees of varying heights, widths, and shapes in a single tree area or line
- Place individual trees with a point-and-click
This extension could be useful in making vegetation more visually appealing both to users and clients, and could positively affect analyses which consider vegetation, particularly when simulating an undeveloped forest area near a site.
The Extension ID is: 246e13b7-2721-421d-a3ce-97aaf7482dea
The ID can be entered into the “Unpublished” tab of the extensions page, and the extension will then be available in the analysis window. If you do use the extension, I'd appreciate a comment on this post with your experience and/or feedback.
Here's a video of the configuration workflow (configurations are saved for later use, but this shows how to configure them):
Below is a short user guide:
When opening the app, you’ll be greeted by the screen below, minus the “Riverside Forest Area”:
Clicking “New Area” or “New Line” will open a configuration page for a tree area or line configuration, covered later. “Refresh” will reload configurations stored in the project- which could be useful if multiple users are making changes to Thicket configurations at the same time. All configurations are shown on this screen- “Riverside Forest Area” is an example. The buttons allow you to place a tree area/line, replace selected tree areas/lines, or edit the configuration.
The configuration page looks like this (tree area, followed by tree line):
Much of this page should (I hope) be fairly self-explanatory, but there are a few things I’d point out:
- To edit a configuration’s name, double click the current name.
- To add a tree to the configuration, click the plus across from the “Trees:” header.
- Under each tree, “Shape/Size” and “Color” tabs do what you’d think, but under the options tab, you can copy/paste tree configurations, remove the tree, as well as place a single tree onto the map.
- Configurations will not save to your project until the “Save” button is clicked.
An example configuration shown above, Riverside Forest Area, has three trees, and when placed on the map, it looks like this:
Any questions, feel free to reach out.
The rest of this post just shows off Thicket a bit:
Before/After Thicket trees:
Tree configurations also let you place some wilder trees. Want to place California Redwoods and/or cherry blossoms? It can be done:
I hope to add more on the analytical side on the future, including the ability to add a tree by its species, and analyze what species would work best where on your project (particularly recommending native species), but that might be added later. In the meantime, I appreciate any feedback.
Thanks,
Nathaniel Green
