User manual AUTODESSYS FORM Z DEMO

[. . . ] Demo Mini User's Manual form·Z Demo Mini User's Manual Table of Contents About form·Z RadioZity Demo How to use this manual Getting help Communicating with form·Z About form·Z and its types of objects Reference planes, grids, and their palette Mouse movement and the perpendicular lock Snapping Zooming and panning Object generation methods Generating primitive objects Objects from modifiers Undoing, redoing, and deleting Viewing Plotting and rendering Viewing QuickTime VRTM movies Drawing objects Picking Moving, rotating, sizing, and mirroring Derivative objects Ghosting the operands Revolved objects Helixes Screws and bolts Stairs Sweeps Skinning Plain meshes Smooth meshes Reducing the resolution of meshes Controlled curves (c-curves) Controlled meshes (c-meshes) Mesh moves Applying point disturbances Deformations Parallel objects Projections and unfolding objects Terrain models Rounding Draft angles Boolean operations Trimming, splitting, and stitching Sections of solids Deriving contour lines Joining and separating Grouping and ungrouping Nurbz meshes Patches Metaformz 3D text Symbols Editing lines Attaching Extending segments Aligning and distributing Placing objects on other objects Coloring objects and their faces Placing objects on layers Querying objects and their parts Insertions Features not covered in this Mini Manual 3 3 3 4 6 8 9 9 9 10 10 12 14 14 15 17 18 20 21 22 22 23 24 25 26 28 31 34 35 36 37 38 40 41 42 44 46 47 48 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 60 62 64 66 67 67 68 70 71 72 73 74 75 2011 Riverside Drive Columbus, Ohio 43221 www. formz. com auto des sys Phone: (614) 488-9777 Fax: (614) 488-0848 formz@autodessys. com INC form·Z Demo 3. 0 Mini User's Manual SEVENTH EDITION: June 1999 COPYRIGHT: © auto·des·sys, Inc. All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transcribed, transmitted, or translated into any language in any form by any means, except with the written permission of auto·des·sys, Inc. This manual was created electronically using Adobe PageMaker® on an Apple Macintosh® computer. All illustrations in this manual, including the models on the cover, were created using form·Z. TRADEMARKS: form·Z, RenderZone, and RadioZity are trademarks of auto·des·sys, Inc. Apple, Macintosh, Quadra, Power Macintosh, QuickDraw, QuickDraw 3D, QuickTime, QuickTime VR and the MacOS logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. [. . . ] The differences are in the way they are drawn and also in the way they are edited. While all the types of the splines are also available as c-curves, the reverse is not true. To a certain extent, the splines can be transformed to c-curves and some of the c-curves can be transformed to splines. This is done with the Drop Controls tool (10th row right), which is not covered in this Mini Manual. 37 Controlled meshes (c-meshes) Meshes are surfaces subdivided to smaller pieces, usually called tiles. form·Z offers you plain meshes (discussed previously), controlled meshes (c-meshes), and patches and nurbz meshes (discussed on pages 58 and 57). C-meshes are internally stored with the controls that generate them, ) tool is used and thus can easily be edited and reshaped. The C-Mesh ( to both generate new meshes and reshape existing c-meshes. · Working on a Front view, draw three lines in the same direction, as shown. · Next select the 30/60 view and move two of the lines to position them roughly as shown. · With topological level at Object, use the Pick tool to pick the three lines from back to front. · Select the C-Mesh tool and click the mouse in the graphics window. A mesh appears on your screen and on top of it another structure (shown in red) called the control net. The net is for the c-meshes what the length depth control lines are for the c-curves. As you move your mouse around the net, you length segment point again notice that its cursor changes to: +z +y -x +x -y -z when on a point, when on a length segment, and when on a depth segment. When you press control (Macintosh) or ctrl+alt (Windows) as you place the cursor on a length and , or depth segment, it changes to respectively, indicating that the complete length and depth lines are selected. The direction along the control lines picked for the generation of the mesh is called the length of the mesh. The distinction is significant, especially when you select parameters from the Controlled Mesh Options dialog (or the options palette). depth line length line depth segment In the example, we used the default parameters. While in the edit mode, we moved the two front corner points in the X direction, and the middle segment at the rear of the net up, after selecting the Perpendicular switch from the window tools. 38 Note that while in the c-mesh edit mode the tool bar is grayed out to indicate that it is inactive. The window palette remains active and its operators complement the c-mesh editing process. You exit the edit mode by double clicking away from the mesh or by clicking on the tool bar. When you do, the mesh reappears in its final form and without its controls. The C-Mesh tool can be used to reenter the c-mesh edit mode in order to manipulate the shape of the mesh further. You do this simply by selecting the C-Mesh tool and clicking on the mesh. [. . . ] After the completion of the operation one of the new faces is returned picked (red). You can double click away from the object to reverse the pick (to cause the other face to be selected). You can continue inserting on the picked face to possibly produce a staircase, as shown. 4 3 · Undo enough times to return to the original cube. · To insert a hole, select the top face of the cube, select the Insert ), select a negative height from the Heights Hole modifier ( menu, select the Rectangle tool, and draw a rectangle as shown. Observe the result. [. . . ]