What is the purpose of FormIt?

[Anonymous]

Revit is often chosen as the primary documenting tool in many architectural offices and not a design tool as it’s widely acknowledged that Revit is extremely limited in dealing with complex conceptual modelling geometry. Autodesk’s attempts at introducing a dedicated conceptual modelling environment in the form of FormIt has also failed drastically as there hasn’t been a single new modelling feature or enhancements over the past two years. Apart from the splitting surfaces, which has it's limits in Revit, Formit has even less modelling capabilities as the already crippled Revit and doesn’t have any freeform organic capabilities. Several free m3d modelling apps that are available in the Apple app store can do more and handle very complex geometry than a dedicated conceptual tool like FormIt. Dynamo which was supposed to be the big game changer for architects using Revit, seems also destine to an extremely slow anti architect development. While it’s evident that in almost 20 years of the existence of Revit, Autodesk hasn’t catered not once to contemporary design architects and this apparent dislike towards architects seems to impair Formit modelling development efforts as well in favor of the usual nitty gritty day to day practical enhancements, which resembles Revit’s development for the past 20 years.

On the contrary to Revit, Bim software like VectorWorks and Archicad have integrated conceptual modelling tools (subdivision surface modelling tools, mesh tools, nurbs, 3d fillets and chamfer tools, etc,) into the software. Architects/designers can start from scratch in these software and carry the project all the way to completion. If a firm uses Revit (usually long time autocad users firms), the  workflow looks as following: young, recent graduates who are relatively computational literate, spend long hours at the office to win a competitions. These people then jump onto other projects and if the competition is awarded, a new team is put together to deliver the project. This will most likely contain more experienced architects more attune to developing and delivering the project. The Rhino model is thrown out and completely rebuilt from scratch within Revit. Autodesk has chosen not to integrate conceptual modelling tools into Revit which is imho an inefficient way of working, but introduced Formit over 5 years ago to bridge that gap. But if the only thing you can do within FormIt is extrude solids, sweep profiles along a 2d path and create segmented lofts, what is the purpose of FormIt? It doesn’t replace SketchUp which has far more modelling capabilities than Formit. It doesn’t replace tools like Rhino which is by far the most chosen design software for architects and students. Is FormIt for small firms who don’t have any conceptual design tools, but use Revit?  

[pieter7]

I'm sure Formit will be used differently by different people.

As far as we are concerned, we hope that Formit will one day come as powerful as Sketchup but with a full bidirectional integration with Revit. 

That way, Formit would become the 'sketchpad' for Revit. In our office, the design process is iterative (we keep designing until the end) so we need to be able to go back From Revit to Formit to work out different design iterations, even when the Revit model is at an advanced stage.

Formit is perfectly suited for this as its part of the Autodesk portfolio. I don't see Trimble developing a decent Revit link any time soon.

We've posted this as an idea on the Formit Idea station. Consider adding your vote if you think it would be helpful in your workflow.