Rating: 
Summary: Great book makes learning form.Z so easy!
Review: I had been wanting to learn form.Z for a long time, having heard rave reviews about it in the CAD community. Luckily, I found "Into 3D with form.Z" which gave me all the incentive I needed to learn it. I must say that form.Z lives up to all that I have heard about it -- it is very intuitive and user-friendly, and makes 3D modeling on the computer as easy as sketching on a piece of paper. And this book makes it even simpler. By the end of the first chapter, I had learnt enough to be able to model fairly complex 3D configurations, and by the end of the book, I had learnt everything there was to know about form.Z. An altogether excellent resource!
Rating: 
Summary: It's a descent start.
Review: I may be a little harsh on the rating but I think the book has a descent starting foundation for the beginner. I have this problem of only reading to page 150 of any "how to" book and I found myself doing the same with this one. However, I have come back to this book repeatedly for answers and modeling help. Mind you this is not reference book so much as it's a tutorial as the final tutorial helps has you draw the books cover. I did find that this book gave me a descent foundation to where I knew enogh to experiment on my own, which in my opinion is one of the best ways to learn.
Rating:
Summary: It's a descent start.
Review: I may be a little harsh on the rating but I think the book has a descent starting foundation for the beginner. I have this problem of only reading to page 150 of any "how to" book and I found myself doing the same with this one. However, I have come back to this book repeatedly for answers and modeling help. Mind you this is not reference book so much as it's a tutorial as the final tutorial helps has you draw the books cover. I did find that this book gave me a descent foundation to where I knew enogh to experiment on my own, which in my opinion is one of the best ways to learn.
Rating:
Summary: Great book for a form.Z beginner
Review: I personally found the book very useful as a complete beginner to form.Z. It has laid an excellent foundation for advanced work with the program.
Rating: 
Summary: Still no good book on Form Z
Review: I thought this would be the one. The author's description seemed very thorough and the initial reviews were good. The book looks great. What I found frustrating was that for some reason, several of the command and menu names were different than what the version of the software I use says. It's the newest version too (3.0.3 I think). That is kind of frustrating and makes some of the things hard to follow. I was also very disappointed in the animation stuff. That is really what version 3 is all about and the book only briefly touches on it. I've been modeling with earlier versions of Form Z for a while and I also found that some of the example exercises didn't teach very good modeling techniques and some of my simple scenes had so many polygons they would barely render on some of the slower computers at school. Also, when are we going to get a color section in a Form Z book? I think every other computer program book has a color section and it would be really nice if we Form Z users could get one too.
Rating: 
Summary: Expired software?
Review: I was looking forward to diving into the tutorial but was delayed in finding the appliction which had been tucked inside another folder. Upon opening the application I was confronted by the message "This software expired on 12/01/99. Please contact auto-des-sys or your local dealer/contact to renew your software or become a licensed member". I was unable to contact auto-des-sys via the web since I do not have a registered product. I'm confused now about how to go about obtaining current software. Do I contact Amazon, Mc Graw Hill, auto-des-sys or the author? Not a good start to what appears to be a fine tutorial system.
Rating: 
Summary: It's Very Good...TRUST ME!
Review: I work for a professional Design firm in Pittsburgh and we were asked to take on the challenge of 3D modeling with FormZ. My Illustration Team needed to learn it fast and thanks to this book, we all did just that... even though none of us had 3D modeling experience!I felt a bit overwhelmed when I saw the FORMZ interface but this book tamed every step of the learning curve. Exceptionally easy to read and an excellent resource. We're ordering another one today so we all don't have to fight over just one! Get it. Read it. Know it. Done. :)
Rating:
Summary: Impossible task for an author
Review: Now that I have a fair understanding of FormZ (after many weeks )I feel I can deliver a fair review of this book: The author never had a chance. I have used several other 3D applications and many 2D graphics programs. They all have some things in common, but FormZ appears as if developed on the Moon. The interface is devoid of elegance and requires more mouse clicks to do simple operations than any other program. It is inconsitant and has no sense of a being a unified package. It is more like hundreds of independent programs tossed into a basket -- none of them having anything to do with each other. Lachmi Khemlani tries to bring order to this unruly rat's nest, but really has no chance. Perhaps knowing FormZ has the unintended consequence of forgetting how the rest of the world does 3D. How else to explain why she often leaves out very basic information. She tells you, for instance, "draw a square at 45 degrees on the center of the previous shape." Unlike every other program on the planet, however, FormZ has no align tool, making centering objects an ordeal at any angle. Ms. Khemlani does not explain this, nor any other, basic FormZ deviation. It is a train wreak of a program which can be mastered, but in doing so one must unlearn every other computer graphics program -- a difficult positon for an author writing a how -to book. FormZ may be powerful, but all the power in the world cannot overcome this utterly confused interface without one-on-one instruction. My advice: buy the book, but only as a supplement to a class.
Rating:
Summary: Impossible task for an author
Review: Now that I have a fair understanding of FormZ (after many weeks )I feel I can deliver a fair review of this book: The author never had a chance. I have used several other 3D applications and many 2D graphics programs. They all have some things in common, but FormZ appears as if developed on the Moon. The interface is devoid of elegance and requires more mouse clicks to do simple operations than any other program. It is inconsitant and has no sense of a being a unified package. It is more like hundreds of independent programs tossed into a basket -- none of them having anything to do with each other. Lachmi Khemlani tries to bring order to this unruly rat's nest, but really has no chance. Perhaps knowing FormZ has the unintended consequence of forgetting how the rest of the world does 3D. How else to explain why she often leaves out very basic information. She tells you, for instance, "draw a square at 45 degrees on the center of the previous shape." Unlike every other program on the planet, however, FormZ has no align tool, making centering objects an ordeal at any angle. Ms. Khemlani does not explain this, nor any other, basic FormZ deviation. It is a train wreak of a program which can be mastered, but in doing so one must unlearn every other computer graphics program -- a difficult positon for an author writing a how -to book. FormZ may be powerful, but all the power in the world cannot overcome this utterly confused interface without one-on-one instruction. My advice: buy the book, but only as a supplement to a class.
Rating:
Summary: You love the cover! What are you kidding?
Review: The cover doesn't, nor do the example in the book, suggest the potential for the modeling that is possible with formZ. I have read the previous reviews and read the book and understand the admiration for the attempt to write and easy example based tutorial manual, but the fact of the matter is that this book falls amazingly flat in opening a new users eyes to what, after a few months of using the program, they might be able to create. The admiration for this cover being the most blatent proof of this contention. For god's sake the potential for almost photo-realistic portrayls of space and objects is phenomenal and nothing in this book even approaches that kind of detail or even attempts it. FormZ is a powerful tool, one should try and convey this.
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