Topic: Bonzai 3d - A sketchup competitor

[Architectural Innovation]

Has anyone tried out Bonzai 3d by AutoDesSys?

It looks very interesting... kind of like a more defined, powerful version of sketchup that has all of the best ruby script capabilities built in. The geometry is all parametric. pretty nice.

i have downloaded the trial version and played around for a day or two and was quite impressed, but have not been able to re-visit it before the trial expired.

just wondering if anyone has gone farther or has purchased and used it on any projects.

Questions remaining would be how the export for Lumion process would work, reliability, compatibility with other content, etc.

thanks,

bob

[Architectural Innovation]

I found this discussion regarding b3d and Lumion:
http://www.formz.com/forum/discus41/messages/49778/51474.html?1318062703

[Gaieus]

I have bonzai3d and indeed it looks like a very versatile application - although I have to admit that I have not played too much with it yet.

[Michael]

I am using FormZ, which is basically Autodessys version of Bonzai with some extra functionality, which I rarely use. The program has been in development since the early 90'ies as far as I know, and appears to be very polished. Working within a feature-set already present in Bonzai I am doing Archviz and set-design. The program is an excellent and very speedy modeler. It imports a lot of formats, notable exception is fbx, and export to Lumion works via 3ds. Lumion does not read Collada-files created in FormZ. Tried with Bonzai, the same. Autodessys states their collada-exporter creates files excatly according to spec, so it seems Lumion is either just working with colladas generated by the likes of Sketchup or Autodessys got it wrong.
Anyway, I recommend giving Bonzai a try. They have a fully functional 1-month demo and currently an open beta of a new FormZ-version as well.
Must sound like a sales-rep, but their customer support is better than any I have seen thus far and their forum is quite lively and helpful. Just as Lumion's.

[Morten]

Hi Michael, could you upload a simple cube exported from Bonzai (in Collada format)?

[Architectural Innovation]

thanks for the info michael. it seems that nobody really exports anything form any program to spec...or something like that. Im sure these programmers have their hands full with file format compatibility. good luck guys.

bob

[tug]

Hi Robert...

Ufff... we use Bonzai, between other modeler, and for our work in architecture we've had return to SKP 8 Pro, after tried to do in Bonzai3D. Surely we didn't find the right way to working on still.

Bonzai is a good software, works on 64b but for those simple process is quite complicate than SKP.

Nurbs sculpting is "quite much more" better than use surfaces in skp, but there are a lot of plugins and tips to do the same easily in skp (artisan for instance, fredo libs....)

regards

[Architectural Innovation]

lofts, thanks. i was thinking the same thing after trying it but keeping up with SU plugins, etc. is a bit of a pain. BUT, those ones you mention, fredo, artisan as well as ThomThom, etc are fantastic SU plugins that really can save the day.

I wish there was a better way to manage plugins in SU but for now i guess we cant complain too much. The force is strong in the SU community.