WELCOME to form•Z Demo, the 3d form synthesizer.  The following paragraphs summarize the basic features of the system, but leave many details uncovered.  More information about specific tools and commands can be obtained by selecting the respective item under this Help  environment.  

form•Z Demo is a working version of form•Z which is intended to let you experience its modeling operations and interface.  These features are disabled: the drafting module, the printing facilities, the Save File command, the import and export facilities, the geographical sun positioning operation, and the high end scan-line rendering.  form•Z Demo is also limited to 2 hour work sessions, therefore, when the time limit is reached, you will be prompted to quit and restart.

The basic types of modeling objects are thesurfaces  and  the solids.   A surface object can be a simple open or closed line or a meshed surface.  An object is solid when it is completely enclosed, which makes it well formed.  Variations of these basic types are the surface solids,  which are two-sided surfaces that are completely enclosed but contain no volume;  the enclosures,  which can be surface or solid objects,  are double line ("wall") objects that contain space;  the controlled curves  and the controlled meshes.   The latter two are curved objects which internally carry the control  parameters that generated them and thus their forms can be easily changed after their initial creation.

You communicate with form•Z through the menu bar  commands at the top of the screen, the tool palette  (iconic menu )  on the left, floating  palettes  dedicated to particular operations, and the  window tools  found on the lower margin of each window. The red number in the same margin is the memory box  that informs you about the computer memory currently available to your session.  A variety of dialog boxes  are also used to set parametric options.  The dialog that affects a tool can be invoked from the tool by clicking on its icon while pressing the option key.  The dialogs can also be invoked from menu bar items, primarily from the Options menu.

Pressing the mouse on an icon of  the tool palette pops out more icons, any of which can be selected by dragging the mouse to it.  Dragging the mouse beyond the last icon tears off the icons as an independent palette that can be positioned anywhere on your screen.  You can also turn icons off and shorten your tool palette.  This is done in this Help environment.    After you invoke the modeling or the drafting Help window, you can turn a tool off or on by double clicking on its icon.

The  colored rows in the tool palettes contain modifiers  that set the mode under which the action producing tools, shown in black and white, operate.   The tools on the first row tell the program what type of an object to generate.   On the 4th row are the Topological Level modifiers:  point,  segment,  outline, face, object,  group, and hole/volume.  form•Z has the ability to apply most of its operations  to any of these levels.

All objects can be generated graphically or through numeric input.  Input is relative to an active reference plane, which can be one of the Cartesian planes, or a plane you generate somewhere in 3D space.  You may switch reference planes  from the window tool palette or from the Reference Planes palette. Arbitrarily positioned planes may be defined using the Define Arbitrary Plane tool on the last row of the tool palette.  Numeric input is entered through the Prompts palette that also instructs you about the steps required for the execution of an operation.

form•Z is organized in projects.  Each project has its own windows. There are two types of windows: modeling and drafting windows.
 
Whenever you attempt to execute an inappropriate operation,  form•Z beeps and posts an internal message. To read the message and the cause of the refusal click on the "?" window tool.