Jesper Staahl
Hello again! It’s Jesper from the Forma team. I did an okay enough job writing about product updates last time, so I was allowed back for another update!
We did promise you an update on updates every season or so, right?
I’m currently back home at my office in Oslo, Norway, where we’ve only got a few hours of sun every day currently, and the slopes and mountains around us are brimmed with snow. I think I’ll strap on some skis and hit the slopes as soon as I’m done writing this. Perks of living up north!
I figured that this time around, I’d have an easy job listing a few updates from the last quarter and get a few extra miles on my cross-country skis! The developers at Forma had other plans…
49 Updates since October. Forty-nine. What? That’s even more updates per week than last. And these are juicy ones; let’s get into it!
This quarter, the updates can be sorted into four themes:
- Higher levels of detail, it’s all about connecting architects with quality data providers.
- Parametric building design tools and statistics. It’s all about empowering architects with insights and design tools
- Extensions, both internal and external,
- And upgrading the existing tools across the board.
In this post, I’ll give you the highlights, and if you want to join me and Daria breaking it down on a webinar, we are going to be talking all about this on January 30th at 17:00CET / 8:00am PST; you can sign up for the webinar here!
Let’s talk about higher levels of detail in datasets!
Autodesk wants to continue to enable access to high-quality contextual data directly on Forma. We’ve worked with official governmental providers to unlock and enable more free data for our customers. We’ve also built a few proofs of concepts in select countries, like Germany, showing how they can provide higher-quality data directly through Forma with their APIs.
Most importantly, I’m glad that more and more providers are offering data directly in Forma. If you’re missing your favorite, feel free to nominate them directly in-app! We have a team dedicated to working with these providers to enable them.
ESRI now offers 1m terrain, where available, in Forma
I’m so happy to see that our Autodesk strategic partner ESRI is now offering their terrain to Autodesk Forma users globally! For now, we’re connected to their database, ‘the World Elevation,’ and I look forward to seeing how this partnership will continue to develop on Forma going forward. They’ve got a lot of great databases; I wonder what’s next?
A new Flexible Housing tool
In my opinion, this quarter’s biggest hit is the House tool. Initially intended for Rowhouse/terraced housing and other low-density typologies, this tool is a first stepping stone into more parametric building tools in Forma.
If you’re working with this type of typology, I’m sure you’ll be as psyched as I am! Along with this tool comes some significant upgrades to how Forma handles area metrics and unit distribution. Combined with the floor plan tool, you can start digging into the number of units and other area statistics as you design.
Although not intended for it; the House tool can be used for so many weird niche cases. Instant industrial halls? porta-poties at festivals? Detached housing, Amsterdam-style canal houses? I look forward to exploring this tool more, but even more so, I look forward to seeing how you all like and use the tool. Let’s compare notes!
Dynamo for Forma beta
Another huge one, especially for the techier ones amongst you: We released a beta of Dynamo for Forma. Forma offers a lot of smartness out of the box, a 90% solution, as Sol Amour put it nicely, but there is always some tailoring needed for specific or local needs. We’ve therefore started to enable more and more to be done through APIs and the Dynamo connection.
Personally I find Dynamo intimidating, but I’m slowly learning that it can be used to do so much more than “twisty towers and fancy facades.” One of the coolest examples I saw recently was Paolo Galli, Principal Implementation Consultant at Autodesk, spawning pedestrian bridge pathways in Forma based on a single vector drawn. It pulled from a Revit family, maintaining editability inside Revit and using Dynamo to push these geometries to Forma. If that’s not a good proof of concept, I don’t know what is!
The Extension Store is taking off.
But for those less techy, you should keep an eye on the extension store. Developers and enthusiasts are really starting to ramp up the production of extensions to Forma that will help you get those last 10% to get you where you need to go in Forma. Companies such as:
- Plex-Earth with high-fidelity satellite photos,
- EvolveLab with their AI-powered visualization app for Forma, Revit, and the web
- Testfit with their Parking generator, now in version 2.0
- And rumor has it Symetri is brewing up something epic…
-They are all building extensions on Forma currently. Our internal developers have built up a library of examples and libraries that enable others to do even more going forward!
Beyond these highlights, you should know we’ve launched a solid little measurement tool and a shadow study analysis. We’ve enabled larger and more robust analysis for Wind and Microclimate. Lastly, we’ve worked with data providers in Germany and Sweden to make their datasets licensed for export to Revit, and speaking of:
Round it off with our very own Revit and Rhino extensions
Our Revit extension had several updates last quarter, taking it from 0.8.10 to 0.8.12 with several quality-of-life improvements.
And, after a few months in the boiler, the Rhino extension has also been moved out of Beta, taking it from version 0.6.3 to 0.6.6. We couldn’t have done it without your feedback!
I’m keeping it brief here, my last post was too wordy for the almighty algorithm I’ve been told. So if you’re still with me down here, thanks for reading, I hope to see you on our webinar on January 30th 17:00CET / 08:00am PST where we will really dig into these and more updates.
And if these update blogs don’t come fast enough for you, keep a steady eye on changes.autodeskforma.com (sign-in required) to get the latest news on updates as they roll out!
Now for some skiing, catch you next time!
Jesper