From the course: Learning Formit Pro

Explore the benefits of FormIt Pro - Formit Pro Tutorial

From the course: Learning Formit Pro

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Explore the benefits of FormIt Pro

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- [Instructor] Welcome to this course on Autodesk FormIt, which can be used to create energy analysis using mass models and presentation quality surface models, both of which are fully compatible with Autodesk RevIt so that they can be developed further. My name is Jim Cowan and I'm happy to show you the features in FormIt, for example, its ability to calculate cumulative insulation values over the course of a year or month by month, so giving you fast feedback that will help you, for example, place solar panels efficiently. You get color coding on the surfaces and you also get read out according to where your cursor is. FormIt can be used to create scenes, which can then be combined, for presentation purposes, into an animation. In this case, explaining how you can start with mass forms, then add shading forms to end up with a complete energy model, it can be passed on to RevIt, or a presentation quality surface model. The interface is very simple and very easy to use. It's not AutoDraft and it's not SketchUp, but once you appreciate the way that it's designed, it's a very productive tool. You can start with a hierarchy of lines to surfaces to forms and then you can draft on surfaces and you can enter data directly by simply clicking and dragging in most cases. There's also a contact sensitive menu for lines, for surfaces, and for forms that give you the choices that are most appropriate to what you are doing and then, for example, you don't need to go looking for other tools, you can just drag one surface through forms. FormIt and RevIt work hand and glove. For example, you can create content for FormIt from RevIt families and use them in your presentation models. There's very clear instruction when you are editing any of those families, as to what will carry forward into RevIt and what won't. For example, here if I add the glass material, you saw the warning that said that's going to be visible for this inside FormIt, but not carry forward to the RevIt family and the RevIt family can be substituted for these FormIt families at any time in the RevIt environment. Grouping objects is a way of isolating objects and of passing changes through a model and a very efficient way to work. Visibility within FormIt is done according to layers where objects can be assigned to a layer and layers can be turned on or turned off. An exciting new development is the inclusion of Dynamo, so that you can use FormIt for generative design. Dynamo will let you create really an interactive interface where the user can change parameters that are driving those 3D mass forms. Instead of having to model everything as a three dimensional form, there is an option in FormIt where you can use materials and those materials would be carried forward into RevIt. So you can define your own FormIt materials from image files and you can use them and carry them forward into RevIt. There are lots of other features covered in this short course, especially with regard to interoperability. Thank you for taking the course and I appreciate feedback. Thank you.

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