The following text is a summary of the form•Z features. For a more detailed discussion and illustration of the features mentioned, please click on the active fields to branch to other pages.

form•Z is an award winning general purpose solid and surface modeler with an extensive set of 2D/3D form manipulating and sculpting capabilities, many of which are unique. It is an effective design tool for architects, landscape architects, urban designers, engineers, animators and illustrators, industrial and interior designers, and all design fields that deal with the articulation of 3D spaces and forms. form•Z is highly responsive to the needs of mature designers and, at the same time, novices can use it with ease.

• · Highly interactive graphic interface with associated multiple windows, tear off tool palettes, virtually unlimited and selectively applied Undo/Redo operations, customizable key shortcuts for all the operations, simultaneously available prepick and postpick modes, and integrated 2D/3D operations allow you to work in either 2D or directly in 3D space.
• · Dynamically generated 3D solids and 2D shapes include rectangles, n-sided polygons, patterned polygons, circles, ellipses, arcs, free hand line drawings, splines, and double ("wall") lines. These can be extruded in a direction perpendicular to their plane, or to a point.
• · Derivative objects that can be generated from other objects include 2D shapes, parallel extrusions or extrusions to a point, walls, lathed objects, helixes, screws and bolts, spiral stairs, one and two-source sweeps along arbitrary paths, multi-source/multi-path skinning, 2D and 3D sections of solids, projections of objects including unfolded objects, and parallel objects.
• · Spherical objects, that include the complete set of Platonic solids, soccer balls, and lathed and geodesic spheres, can be generated both interactively and through numeric input, and can also be scaled and stretched.
• · Terrain models can be generated as true 3D solids, trimmed to the shape of a site, from 2D contour lines. The four available types, mesh, triangulated mesh, stepped, and triangulated contour models, can be freely combined to model rivers, roads, flat areas, and a variety of other topographies.
• · Smoothly curved splines and meshed surfaces can be generated and edited interactively using one of a complete set of mathematical methods that include NURBS, B-splines, and Bezier curves.
• · ™Metaformz allow you to organically blend a variety of 3D forms, and as implemented in form•Z raises the metaballs technology to unprecedented levels.
• · Mesh models both flat and smoothly curved can be created, then edited and reshaped interactively by changing their parameters and their geometry, or by applying one of the many available deformation operations to pull or push an area, or to bend and twist. Image based displacements can be used to imprint a shape on both flat and already meshed surfaces.
• · Advanced rounding can be applied to vertices, edges, or both vertices and edges including concave vertices and sequences of edges called stitches. Draft angles can also be applied to surfaces of solids.
• · 2D and 3D text (TrueType™ and PostScript™) can be generated as plain text or as text objects. A variety of text placement methods are available, including the placement of text on or between freely unfolding and editable control lines.
• · Boolean operations, which include union, intersection, and difference, as well as the composite split operation, can be applied to either 2D shapes or 3D solids. They can be used to compose primitive shapes into arbitrarily complex forms.
• · Trim, Split, and Stitch operations are Boolean-like operations that can be applied to surface meshed objects as well as to solids, to cut away a piece, to separate an object into two or more parts, or to connect objects together.
• · Both 3D symbols for modeling and 2D symbols for drafting can be defined and stored into symbol libraries. The program actually ships with a few libraries of its own. Symbols can be placed as instances as many times as desirable through a variety of placement options. Also, symbol editing operations allow you to apply global or local changes to instances.
• · The Query tool provides the ability to determine information about objects, and to calculate areas, volumes, and distances.
• · Graphically and dynamically executed 2D/3D geometric transformations provide the ability to move, rotate, scale, or reflect either individual entities or groups of entities simultaneously. They can be applied at any of the topological levels (point, segment, face, volume, or group), and a sequence of transformations can be recorded as a macro, which is editable and can be applied as a single operation.
• · Insertions and deletions are 2D/3D form editing and sculpting operations that can be applied to points, segments, outlines, faces, or volumes. Combined with geometric transformations, they provide an extensive ability to reshape forms.
• · Attach, extend, and place tools facilitate the positioning of objects or their parts relative to other objects.
• · Perspective, axonometric, oblique, isometric, and panoramic views can be graphically controlled by interactively changing the viewing position. You may also view your work in straight up perspective, or use match perspective view to easily blend your model into an existing environment. Viewing positions can be selected from a menu, or one of two tools can be used to navigate through space interactively and to select the desired view. For more control of the viewing parameters, the Cone of Vision may be manipulated to accurately define the position of the viewer, angle of vision, center of interest, and light source, and to position the hither and yon planes. Drawing and graphic input in general can occur under any viewing type and angle.
• · Underlays are images that can be opened and placed in the background of a window for both 2D projections and 3D views. They are useful both for tracing drawings that may have been scanned, and for modeling within the context of an existing environment which may be depicted in the underlay.
• · Display options include wire frame, hidden line, surface, and z-buffer rendering with smooth shading, soft and hard shadows, and antialiasing. Photorealistic rendering, including raytrace, and radiosity is available in •formZ RenderZone and •formZ RadioZity. Shaded renderings for interactive manipulations are available through QD3D on MacOS and OpenGL.
• · A drafting module is integrated with the modeling module, which allows images to be transported from modeling to drafting and vice versa. In addition to a variety of drawing tools, the drafting module offers associative dimensioning and hatching, 2D Boolean operations, text, and symbols.
• · Import and export utilities include BMP, DWG, DXF, EPS, FACT, IGES, Illustrator, Lightscape, OBJ, PICT, PNG, QTVR, RIB, SAT, STL, Targa, TIFF, VRML, 3DGF, 3DMF, and 3DS.
• · Rapid prototyping is made easy with STL.
• · 2D/3D digitizing is supported through two distinct modes, screen and world.
• · Floating point precision, virtually unlimited layers, English and metric units, on line Help, numeric input, user defined preferences, and more features are also included.