Best Of

No deal???

https://www.investors.com/news/technology/autodesk-stock-rallies-as-firm-nixes-rumored-ptc-acquisition/

For us, it hasn't worked out at all. The problem is that before you can Merge your changes back into Main (if Main is protected), the versions of main and the branch have to match exactly, or the Merge won't be allowed. This condition (where the onshape version of the branch matches the main version) exists briefly after you create the branch and Protect Main. However, if much time goes by (max 3 weeks!) now the branch and the Main may no longer share Onshape versions (because of the great update cadence).

Infuriatingly, this causes the merge to fail, and the only way to make it work was to:

1. merge Main into your working branch (I think you might have to unprotect to do this)s, but keep all the branch tabs geometry (merge, but don't merge any actual tabs)
2. then try to Merge your branch back into Main

Often this would fail, or I would make a mistake, or the merge wouldn't take, or something…so I would typically have 2 -3 merges back and forth between Main and my Branch…just to get the conditions to be just right to Merge back into the protected workspace.

Generally, it was far too much work, and we've stopped trying for now.

I really liked the minor barrier to working in Main (you could just Unprotect it to get around it) because it helped us remember to work in the correct branch. But the major hassle also meant that we could: a) Release from the Branch (which we didn't want to do) or b): turn off Protected Workspaces…thereby making the whole thing ineffective.

I've submitted feedback and (I think) a support ticket or two on this.

Basically, they need the Onshape version updates in the background to be ignored by the Protected Workspace - so that the tiny, behind-the-scenes differences don't gum up the works. I haven't tried it for several months, but also haven't noticed anything about updates or new functionality - so I don't know if this issue persists today.

It's hard to see news like this in an optimistic lens because even if I acknowledge the breadth of tools Autodesk offers and some of the generative design or reverse engineering suite they could bring to the table for a product like Onshape, their whole pricing model compartmentalizes everything in a way that you never have access to the full suite of tools. That's a lesson that game devs learned years ago is that you do not want to segment your live userbase into sub-chunks of pay-to-play tiers with different access levels to the product because you'll hemorrhage players to your competitors who aren't doing so.