Mac 3D News: formZ to Celebrate 25 Years of Innovation

In the first year of the 1990’s a new Macintosh software developer made a big splash in the 3D software industry. That company was named AutoDesSys, Inc., and their product was called formZ.

Celebrating 25 Years of Innovation

Back in the era of desktop productivity, high-end 3D software systems were often only on Unix platforms like SGI and Sun, but some of the very best to emerge in the PC markets came by way of Apple’s Mac platform. formZ was arguably the most important to emerge. And the company made huge impacts at Macworld Expos back in the 1990’s.

AutoDesSys is extremely excited to announce their 25th anniversary, which technically took place on the 15th of February. The company will be making special announcements and more celebratory events will follow throughout the year. In a company press release the formZ folks stated:

AutoDesSys users have been our friends for the past 25 years. Their suggestions and comments have effectively contributed to the evolution of form•Z and we always loved to help whenever and wherever questions came from.  AutoDesSys invites everyone to celebrate with us and welcome all users to reminisce by posting their thoughts on the Autodessys facebook page.

Dr. Chris Yessios, President and Co-Founder, says: “What an exciting 25 years it has been… Those of us that have been with the company since the very beginning would by no means trade the experience for anything else. So many tools, that are today taken for granted, were first included in form•Z after long hours of development and experimentation. The rewards came from the users who did not shy from telling us how our program has shaped their careers and even their design personalities. This kind of feedback continues with the same intensity even today. It provides the encouragement to carry on the intense exploration of creativity enhancing tools.

01 – The latest formZ now comes in three versions with scaled feature sets and notably a new “free” version. Celebrating 25 years this February, the company promises more innovation to come.

For 25 years, form•Z has supported imaginative designers, including special movie effects and forensic animations, to mention just a few. More recently, it has led the way in robust 3D printing and digital fabrication.”

David Kropp, Senior VP for Development and Co-Founder adds: “Our motto has been and still is, ‘If you can imagine the form you can build it with form•Z’. This feeds our enthusiasm and excitement looking forward to the next 25 years.”

formZ Today

form•Z is a potent 3D modeling and design application featuring a variety of modeling personalities and tools with a distinctively easy to use interface. It is a most intuitive and versatile professional-grade 3D modeler that is based on advanced 3D solid and surface modeling methods. They maintain accurate representations that allow you to progress from conceptual sketching to detailed design, photorealistic visualization, construction drawings, animation, and fabrication. The current version of form•Z is available in three varieties: form•Z free, form•Z jr, and form•Z pro.

Architosh Analysis

Architosh wishes form•Z a wonderful 25th anniversary! form•Z has made a tremendous impact on the overall 3D software industry and for well over a decade was the key software tool for advanced architectural modeling expression. No other tool was accessible and powerful enough to handle the unusual and creative shapes and forms many architecture students and avant-garde architects were striving for.

02 – AutoDesSys example of what architects do with formZ. (image courtesy of AutoDesSys, Inc.)

While the architectural modeling market today has many more competitors (eg: Rhino and SketchUp) form•Z continues to advance and hold its own ground. The application has a tremendously loyal following, partly because much of its base is on the Mac and Apple’s users are tremendously loyal as a group. But more than that, form•Z has offered power modelers all the features they have wanted in a logical, structured, and accessible application, coupled with the platform flexibility they have sought.

form•Z comes in three core versions today: form•Z Pro, form•Z jr., and form•Z free. The company also makes RenderZone, a Lightworks-based render-engine based photo-realistic render. Importantly, the company a few years ago partnered with Next Limit to bring the Maxwell Renderer to form•Z in the form of a rendering plugin.

03 – The FormZ LAB is in Los Angeles and works as an independent unit from AutoDesSys.

form•Z Lab is a sort of new-ish (dating from mid 2014) direction for the company, publicly, as it seeks to grab the attention and power of social on the net to inspire and collaborate with its community and importantly add to form•Z’s extensions to provide a set of powerful 3D generative design, task automation, and interfacing with devices.

The long rumored, discussed, and anticipated parametric visual scripting environment is coming soon, says the company’s Lab unit. Architosh wrote about this key feature, which will help form•Z compete with Rhino + Grasshopper from McNeel & Associates. form•Z’s Lab operates out of Los Angeles, independent of AutoDesSys’s head office.