Hi blindfoldjump,

Take a look at this video to see how the NURBS Blend, Merge and Extend surfaces tools work in formZ. It concludes with a look at controlling continuity across surfaces which I think you will find very useful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NzhMzZg00w


I also really like how the SketchUp equivalent of the Push/Pull tool (Reshape in formZ) works in conjunction with the Offset Outline, Offset Segment and Imprint commands work for quickly creating and modifying objects. And the way that the drawing plane will switch to whatever surface that you hover over (although it can be locked, if you want) works, which makes it very intuitive when designing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfQtABfGX3M


For any piece of software there is always a learning curve. What I found when playing around with Rhino was that it was powerful, but it was not at all obvious how to harness that power, without extensive training. Look how many people on this forum jumped from Rhino to MOI. There did not seem, at least to me, any real coherent design philosophy in it's operation. It felt really slapped together, although it looks really nice. So many things required advanced knowledge to make anything work. You could not logically puzzle them out. It just wasn't for me. So I'm also not the person to compare formZ surfaces with Rhinos', but looking at the first video will answer some of your questions about formZ anyway. Also I was really interested in T-Splines for Rhino, but there was no demo, and I read a lot of complaints in various forums about it's performance. Plus it is expensive for a plug-in, and formZ has its functions built-in.

That said formZ seems like a much better working (and learning) environment. There are a lot of really good videos explaining the various features. It's a very mature product and has a very responsive support group to answer any questions and fix any problems. I've also seen them take models that are not working properly and fix them and explain any problems for many users in the forums. Reminds me of Michael...

In addition, right clicking on any tool will give you the option to open up the manual entry for that tool, show a video of how that tool works (for many but unfortunately, not all tools) and lets you assign a shortcut key for that tool. Hovering over a tool gives an extended description. It's easy to create your own toolbars and to rearrange existing tools. Hitting the spacebar brings up a favorite tools screen (customizable), displays the last few commands you used and can reuse (the number of tools displayed is customizable) and pressing any key, while on that screen, will give you a list of all the tools starting with that key. Undo's are unlimited. All in all an easy powerful system to learn how it works.

formZ also works at a higher level than poly modelers, getting a lot more done in a shorter amount of time. HTH