Watch the course tutorials here:
What is the course about?
This course will demonstrate how to use tools inside Autodesk Forma to perform a site analysis on your project, and quickly make design decisions around the form of your building in real time. Autodesk Forma is a platform that is part of the next generation of BIM tools that make use of big data to make better design decisions.
Criticism of BIM has commonly revolved around difficulty in making early design decisions on projects, but Forma give you early-stage design tools to help make better decisions before you start working with constraints in BIM software’s like Revit.
What will you learn in each video?
- 14 tutorials
- 0hrs 50mins
- Forma, Revit
Autodesk Forma is a powerful tool that allows you to build urban site models from real-world data for detailed site analysis to assist you in making early-stage design decisions before jumping into BIM software’s like Revit.
Autodesk Forma is a cloud-based modelling software accessed from your web browser, which means it can be accessed from a web browser anywhere on any device. This lesson will explain how to access Forma.
Setting up a new project in Forma requires you to specify a site location, and load data specifically related to the site. This lesson will discuss how to setup a site model using Forma.
The Forma interface contains a range of modelling, data and analysis tools to help you make early-stage design decisions. This lesson will explore the locations of the different tools you will be using in Forma.
A base in Forma is essentially a set of layers with objects that represent our site data that we want to keep constant throughout our project. This typically includes our terrain, property boundaries and existing buildings. This lesson will explore the concept of a base, and how to get it ready to use in Forma.
A Proposal in Forma is our collection of concepts or options we are testing within our project. Forma lets you create multiple proposals to test against the same base site conditions in our project, and compare our results between each to make informed design decisions based on analysis we can perform on each proposal. This lesson will demonstrate how to setup and use proposals in Forma.
Forma comes with a collection of basic modelling tools that allow us to create massing models as simple or as detailed as we like. This lesson will explore a variety of the modelling tools in Forma that will allow you to create almost any chape or object you can imagine.
Forma makes it easy to pull quick area metric data from our design proposals to inform our decision making. This lesson will examine how to prepare your model for an area analysis, and how to read and use the area data it creates.
A building’s relationship with the sun can impact the decisions we make at the early stages of design. Forma’s Sun Hour Analysis measures the amount of time in sunlight at a given date for points covering the ground and the buildings in a proposal. This lesson will demonstrate how to perform a Sun Hour Analysis on your proposals in Forma, and how to compare an analysis to others.
A big factor in early massing studies in architecture is how much daylight will be entering the building from it’s façade. Forma is able to perform a Daylight Potential Analysis, which tells us how much light reaches the facade from the sky as a percentage score. This will indicate how much light would shine through a window placed at those points. This lesson will demonstrate how to perform a Daylight Potential Analysis on your proposals in Forma.
The Solar Energy Analysis tool measures which areas of your building have the most exposure to solar radiation. This analysis allows you to evaluate the potential of generating electricity using solar panels on your building’s roof & façade. This lesson will demonstrate how to perform a Solar Energy Analysis on your proposals in Forma.
The Forma wind analysis is a powerful tool for early phase assessment of your site for various effects caused by wind. It’s important to take wind into consideration in the early stages of your design project to avoid wind tunnels, excessive downdraught caused by your design, or poor pedestrian walking conditions across your site. This lesson will demonstrate how to perform both a Rapid Wind Analysis and a Detailed Wind Analysis on your proposals in Forma.
It’s easy to export any proposal created in Autodesk Forma to Revit to further develop into a BIM model. This lesson will demonstrate how to install the Forma add-on for Revit, and how to send Forma models and import them to Revit.
Forma can also be used to quickly import design models from external software for analysis. This is a great way to take any design you’ve created in an external software to quickly test against environmental factors that may affect your proposal. This lesson will explain how to export models from external design software’s, and place them on your site in Forma for analysis.
What are the learning objectives for the course?
- Understand where Autodesk Forma can be used in the design process
- Have the ability to setup detailed sites in Forma
- Demonstrate the ability to model complex massing forms in Forma
- Have the ability to perform data analysis on massing models in Forma
- Understand how to import and export BIM models from Forma