New user, intro and questions

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I've been watching formit development for a while, and with this latest release (section planes, speed and hide rest of model, I decided to give it a more in depth look. So far, I really like it.

My background. I'm an architect, doing all kind of design work, in Colombia. I've been using sketchup for 12+ years, and I've done several complete projects using sketchup and layout, which has been fun to do on the sketchup side, and ok in layout.

Many offices are demanding REVIT for deliverables. Sketchup+layout, does not have a logical place in this future. The main reason I'm looking at formit now, is as a design friendly front end to revit, which, is IMO, not well suited for design work, but ok for documentation....  I'm trying to do as much as I can get away with in formit, and move into revit as late as possible. I'm not sure if this is doable, but it is a lot more fun to model stuff in formit, than to edit families and whatnot in revit, but, from other people experience, how has this kind of approach worked?

I'm doing a small project, based on a small cabin I'm currenly developing for myself, to test the software.

I really like several aspects of formit,

• First, it's easy to work and get comfortable with coming from sketchup (I do get my right and middle mouse button mixed up every now and then....).
• It is graphically pleasing to use and work with.
• Also, it has a powerful modeling engine, stuff like pushing faces on non regular geometry, offsets, etc. are a nice improvement over skp.
• Built in solar analysis is also good.
• I don't have an ipad, but I do have a touch enabled laptop, so touch enabled navigating is nice to have for meetings.
• Really love the radial context menu.
• And, the capacity of reusing my existing object library is a big plus!

Stuff I'm having problems with....

• Undo sometimes has issues, non intuitive, some operations may be taken into account, others not.
• Non alphabetically sorted lists (materials, layers) (I use a prefix based layer structure)
• No standard ortho views, only top. Why?
• Minor, but group category is hard to find in it's current location. Properties seems to be a more logical location.
• I work in metric, and normally use mm as standard units. Right now, unit snapping works ok, but it would be nice to select mm as default and to input dimensions using mm. (Maybe I'm missing something really simple)
• No feedback when deleting layers (does it delete stuff, does it move it to default layer.
• Is there a way to hide edges? (useful for entourage, trees, etc.)
• Reloading components from disk
• Non Uniform scale of groups (useful for profiles, beams, columns, etc)

I'm really happy with what you've done so fare with this program. Let's hope you continue improving formit. Thank you very much!

[josh.goldstein · Accepted solution]

Hi caronte01,

Thank you for the thorough feedback, and for walking us through your background and approach!

I wanted to comment on your wish list items, as they touch on some good information and useful tips that may be of use to the community at large:

• Undo sometimes has issues, non intuitive, some operations may be taken into account, others not.
  • Undo is currently per-Group, which may require entering Edit Group mode to get the Undo working in that particular context - especially tricky for operations that affect many Groups simultaneously. This can definitely cause confusion and we'd like to offer an Undo system that covers both Global actions and Per-Group actions in the future. Also, yes, some operations are not covered by Undo at all. This should be improved, and we've recorded your feedback in our system.
    
• Non alphabetically sorted lists (materials, layers) (I use a prefix based layer structure)
  • This sounds like a request to alphabetically sort these lists (currently unordered), right? We've added this feedback in our system.
• No standard ortho views, only top. Why?
  • Now that FormIt materials transfer to Revit 2018, there's even more reason to exercise the FormIt/Revit workflow to get nice orthographic drawings out of Revit. Having said that, we do often hear requests for ortho drawings in FormIt, so we've added this feedback too.
    
• Minor, but group category is hard to find in it's current location. Properties seems to be a more logical location.
  • Note that if you edit the Group (double-click it), the Properties panel does reveal the Category option. But the Category option doesn't surface in Properties when the Group is simply selected - it sounds like this is what you're alluding to. If so, we've recorded this feedback.
    
• I work in metric, and normally use mm as standard units. Right now, unit snapping works ok, but it would be nice to select mm as default and to input dimensions using mm. (Maybe I'm missing something really simple)
  • Great feedback. Our metric units support and default input behavior could be improved.
    
• No feedback when deleting layers (does it delete stuff, does it move it to default layer.
  • Deleting a Layer will only move the objects on that Layer to No Layer, it will NOT delete any geometry. If you want to delete everything on a Layer, you can right-click and choose "Select All On This Layer", then Delete the geometry followed by the Layer.
    
• Is there a way to hide edges? (useful for entourage, trees, etc.)
  • Yes! Select the edges and/or faces, and use shortcut SE to Soften Edges (the shortcut works on a mixed selection set). If your selection set only includes the Edges in question, you can also right-click and choose the same option from the radial context menu. You'll have to use the opposite command, Facet Edges (UE), to get the edges visible/snappable again.
    
• Reloading components from disk
  • This would be a nice feature, we've recorded this feedback.
• Non Uniform scale of groups (useful for profiles, beams, columns, etc)
  • This is oft-requested and would definitely be useful. We've recorded your request for this. In the mean time, we do have a very early (read: potentially buggy and unpolished) version of this functionality accessible via shortcut. Go to Edit > Preferences > Shortcuts, and search for non-uniform. Assign that command a keyboard shortcut, and you can begin using/testing this option before it's released. Be careful, and SAVE OFTEN!

[willeminuk]

Great software..
Have to agree on the mm for metric.
And perhaps some good tutorials regarding work flow between formit and revit. BUT also, converting revit back into formit. Problem I have is families are in different locations like our network drive and some in the project number location.
Love the software and hopefully becomes even better..
Good luck from NZ

[Anonymous]

Hi Josh, thanks for the quick reply.

I did some research,and found the way to hide edges by softening them. This was necessary for the inserted skp tree in the file I attached previously. Also, i did notice a small glitch with the way formit displays materials with cutout/alpha values and ambient shadows. The polygon that contains the image is "halo-ed". To work around this, I just decreased the material opacity 1 notch, and the halo was gone.

Alphabetical sorting of lists in general would really be an improvement. The only reason I would imagine having the current system, would be in an illustration/graphics program, to control what's on top and bottom.Or, at least, if a layer is selected, and the plus sign is used to add a new layer, add it below the selected one, and not at the bottom of the list. But, alphabetical makes more sense for this application.

Group category should be available when inside or outside the group. And, ideally, we should be able to select several groups and batch change their category. Right now I can't do that, either from properties or group tree.

Also, I noticed that not all categories are available. In your FormIt primer, i noticed that st column category had to be changed in revit. It would be simpler to define it in formit, if possible.

Regarding metric and mm, yes, that would be ideal. Or at least allow us to use the mm suffix. Right now, m and cm works, mm does not.

Thanks for the tip regarding non uniform scale. I'll try it.

And about ortho views, while I understand that revit should be involved somehow, for quick studies and preliminary work, revit kind of gets in the way, when all I need is a simple elevation image of the project. Ideally, ortho views would allow us to align a view to a face, section or just a standard ortho view.

Again, thank you for all the work you put into this program. 

Santiago

[josh.goldstein]

Hi again @Anonymous,

It's been a while since this thread was started, but I ran across it and wanted to provide an update on some of your requests:

• Undo issues: Undo/Redo is still by-Group (which is really useful for undoing operations in a non-chronological order), but we did add the ability to Undo/Redo chronologically from the Main Sketch in FormIt v16.1 a few months after you posted this, and we just released v18, which fixes some unexpected behavior and inconsistencies when using Undo/Redo from the Main Sketch (chronologically). Overall, Undo/Redo should feel much improved since you posted this.
• Standard ortho/elevation views were added in v17, so you're not limited to Top View anymore!
• Non-Uniform Scale was also added in v17.
• We added support for more units, including mm and cm officially, in FormIt v18, which was just released last week. We also added the ability to set the default units for new sketches in FormIt for Windows.

Hopefully you're still using FormIt and can try out these improvements. Your other feedback is also in our system. We're always looking to tackle some of these highly-requested features, so you may see your other suggestions addressed in the future!

Regards,