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Introducing FormIt v18

by Josh Goldstein, 31 October 2019

Hello FormIt fans!

We're delighted to announce FormIt v18, which brings highly-requested features and some new tools and workflows.

More Units

Work with more units than ever before! FormIt now supports modeling in millimeters, centimeters, and inches. You'll find the new options in Settings -> Units, on all platforms:

 

Geometry Faceting Control

Fans have often requested the ability to customize the faceting quality of circles and arcs. With this update, you can customize that, and more! (FormIt for Windows only)

A new "Units + Precision" section in Edit -> Preferences is where you'll find options for both curves and curved surfaces:

For curves, this sets the faceting count for new circles and arcs, including those coming from Dynamo or SAT files. For surfaces or 3D objects, this sets the density of faceting along any curved surface from Dynamo or SAT files. Read more about curve and surface faceting...

Along these lines, when working with Dynamo, you can now click "Run Graph" in the Properties panel with no parameter changes to force re-run the graph in order to take advantage of any changed faceting settings (or any changed data sources in the graph).

Don't forget, you can still use the Rebuild Curve plugin to retroactively rebuild an existing arc or circle with a new faceting count.

 

New Tools

We've added a couple of new tools to enhance your 3D modeling workflows:

Adjust Material Placement

Enjoy a new interactive tool to place, rotate, and scale the position of materials on faces. In Windows, this replaces the old dialog-based experience, and this tool is brand new on Web and iPad:

Align Camera to Face

Select a face and quickly align the camera to it:

We've also added animated camera transitions when using tools like Align Camera to Face, 3D View, Zoom All, and Zoom Selected.

 

Performance + Import/Export

In all platforms, we vastly improved the performance (100x or more) when deleting Layers in large models. In FormIt for Windows, we made similar performance improvements when exporting large models to FBX, DAE, and DXF file formats.

In FormIt for Windows, we also added the ability to import FBX files and export SketchUp files. Note that SketchUp export is in its infancy, so there are some known issues around textures on Group instances, and faceting on FormIt Meshes.

In FormIt for iPadOS, we added the ability to import and export models to local folders on the device.

 

BIM 360 Docs Improvements

We've improved the BIM 360 Docs experience, including:

  • FormIt models can now be viewed in the BIM 360 Document Management view

  • Models can now be imported from BIM 360 Docs

  • Nested folders are now visible when opening, importing, saving, and exporting

  • Thumbnail previews have been added to the BIM 360 Docs browser in FormIt for Windows

 

Location + Satellite Imagery Improvements

We've improved the experience when setting location and importing satellite imagery (FormIt for Web and Windows only):

  • Language can now be configured for map labels

  • Satellite Imagery is now saved to the FormIt file, and will no longer require an internet connection to be reloaded when the file is opened

  • Navigating manually to a location, then clicking Import Image, will now keep the current map view instead of resetting it

  • Reimporting satellite imagery (like when adding more context imagery) will now keep the image in the correct position, instead of resetting it to the origin

 

Smaller Enhancements + Bug Fixes

We implemented a handful of smaller customer-requested enhancements, including:

  • A new "Properties Plus" plugin is available in the Plugin Manager, which can be used to quantify identical Groups and rename multiple Groups, with more functionality coming soon (FormIt for Windows only)

  • AutoSave now cleans up backup files automatically when "Continue and discard" is clicked when exiting a sketch (FormIt for Windows only)

  • Double-clicking the middle mouse button with geometry selected now uses Zoom Selected, instead of Zoom Extents (FormIt for Web + Windows only)

  • Zoom All and Zoom Selected now adapt as expected when the Group context is hidden

We've also addressed a series of bugs, including:

  • We fixed an issue that would prevent opening or saving of files containing Unicode characters in their file names

  • We fixed an issue with Redo where redoing from the Main Sketch would redo operations from different Groups in the wrong order

  • We fixed an issue in FormIt for Windows where importing Materials from the Autodesk Material Library would fail for some customers

... and so much more! Read the full list of changes for WindowsWeb, and iPadOS.

 

Download Now

Ready to get the update? Download FormIt for Windows, launch the FormIt Web app, or update FormIt for iPadOS from the App Store.

As always, drop us a line on the forums if you're having trouble or have an idea to make FormIt better!