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Best Of
Do you really need Onshape Training?
[Bait]
Back in the day, I learned how to CAD at my university (UALR) using SolidWorks. Some years later, the Lord provided a place for me at a small company (CRM - who still makes cool products btw) that was using this crazy software called Onshape to design their furniture and remodels. It took me about 2 years to learn Onshape on a professional level. Allow me to save you 2 years of trial and error which you will be able to learn in only 2 weeks of training. All you have to do is complete Onshape's Learning Pathways at the Learning Center. That's right, completely free from the amazing Onshape Team! Even if you already "know" Onshape, you still need to take these if you are using CAD "professionally". You will become so much more efficient, in turn, speeding up your daily workflow.
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Whether you have completed the pathways like a pro, or just need more hands-on getting started, CADSharp can help you out. We have some of the brightest Onshapers (Onshapists?) around, and can train you from scratch, or provide time saving custom tools and workflows to ensure your company is using Onshape efficiently. Don't need a hands-on meetings or custom workflows? That's ok, we also offer a direct support Slack channel to our CADSharp Pro users so you can get lightning fast responses to all your Onshape modeling or development questions.
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3D Connexion 3D mouse - It's productive; not how you think it might be
Are you thinking of getting a 3D mouse? Sceptical of the benefits?
I was too. Yet now that I've been using one for 15 years in CAD, I couldn't go with out one.
I changed career in 2006 from computer graphic design to mechanical engineering. Pushed by the issue I was having with my right hand getting over use symptoms to the point I was fearing taking on new work. What's the point of being a graphic designer if you are afraid of the mouse. And it wasn't like you could keyboard your way to design brilliance either. So I looked for a career that didn't rely on the mouse so much. Mechanical engineering. I know what you are thinking, how did I not know that I'd be back to the same problem?
So fast forward to my second round of engineering schooling in 2010 having worked a full year in between as a CAD operator in Solidworks. These student projects meant long days in CAD. 2 weeks of intense work my right hand would have enough. Here I was back to the same problem. I loved CAD more than I loved graphic design, I wasn't going to give up. I needed to try everything I could.
I decided to purchase a mid level 3D Connexion mouse. Space mouse pilot I think it was. My theory was, shifting the 3D rotation tasks to another hand would reduce duty on the primary hand. Because I spent my own money on this, I forced my self to perceiver with it. It's cumbersome at the start. My left hand isn't as fine in its motor skills as the right. I needed to fine tune the speed settings to prevent loosing my view. And last I needed to stop my right hand from middle clicking to 3D rotate. It took a few months before I saw the first advantages.
Does it actually make you faster at CAD? No. If anything I reckon it could slow you down. It depends on how you want to measure being fast at CAD. It does something else that was totally unexpected:
It changes how you approach designing at the computer. Before I had a 3D mouse, I would do a lot of 2D sketch views and when finished, check back in 3D. 2D —> 3D —> 2D and so on…
With the 3D mouse, I found myself doing sketches in 3D views and more in the context of other parts around the design. Every now and again I would lock a sketch in a normal view to be precise on the line work. It became the exception to the normal. I would fly around the model. After a while I would just think, I want to go to there and my left hand knows how to pilot the view.
Did the 3D mouse solve my fatigue issues? Well sadly not. Yes it takes away some of the tasks of the right hand, it also takes away diversity of tasks that can help relieve a repetitive movement. I've since switched to a track ball mouse, and in doing so switched my primary clicking digit from my pointer finger to my ring finger. My old clicking finger and index now move the ball. It's the click and hold while moving the curser that is the killer. There's a lot of that going on in computer graphic design. I've tried everything, including foot peddles. So if you've come this far in reading this and you can relate to this, please, please tell me you found a solution to this pain, and comment.
As for the 3D mouse, do you need the Space Mouse Enterprise? The one with the screen. Put it this way. I don't use any of the buttons or programable keys. I have a mechanical keyboard and prefer the short keys on the keyboard. It also gives the hand some movement. I used them more in Solidworks as features are buried in menus more, not in Onshape. The UI makes macro setups obsolete. Instead get a 3D mouse to up your design thinking game. And try the perspective view that allows you to fly into your design. If you need to pick faces inside an object, you can fly inside without needing to use sectional views.
Re: Improvements to Onshape - December 13th, 2024
Cool your jets @christopher_dziuba even the Onshape devs take a break at Christmas 😁
Re: Mirror an assembly
Re: Cutting spherical shape
(This is the boolean tool, by the way)
New Custom Feature: Publish Geometry
Directly inspired (copied) from @GregBrown's great Top Down video, I wrote my own version of Publish Geometry, which allows you to make Composite Parts that can include Bodies, Faces, Sketch regions, Curves, and Mate Connectors.
One Derive can bring in all of this stuff as a single Composite Part to use as reference geometry for further design work.
I think the script is ok, but let me know if you find bugs.
Re: Rubiks Cube mate / animation
Just some clean-up to ensure the thing still animates.
I stopped being able to animate it before the last two pieces, so I need to tweak a few things.
Almost.... Done...
[Chatbot Copilot] - We Built a FeatureScript AI Assistant That Outperforms ChatGPT
Hey everyone,
I’m a mechanical engineer, and I’ve been working with FeatureScript at my company for about a year now. Honestly, it’s been tough. Tools like ChatGPT suck at FeatureScript, which is frustrating when you know how useful they are for more familiar languages like JavaScript or Python. Unless you're a FeatureScript expert, I think we can all agree that productivity takes a big hit compared to more common languages because there’s no good LLM-powered copilot to help out.
So, we fixed that ! We built our own AI assistant, specifically for FeatureScript !
It’s not perfect, but it’s way better than ChatGPT in this area. This isn’t just a basic GPT model with the Onshape Standard Library as input—two of our machine learning engineers spent six months building it. They used a technique based on a paper called “Large language model multi-agent collaborations”. I’m no, expert but basically, they created a system with reasoning steps, multiple agents working together to analyze questions, generate code, cross-check the documentation, test, and iterate until the output works. It uses RAG, agent-based reasoning, and multiple LLM calls to get the job done. Internally, it’s been a game-changer for how we work with FeatureScript. And while this tool clearly doesn't make us better than a featurescript expert, it does make us infinitely more productive.
Don’t get me wrong, if we had 10 million dollars to label tons of FeatureScript data and fine-tune a big model, that would be even better. But for now, this approach is giving us a really good productivity boost, and we’re pretty excited about it.
Now we’re wondering if we should share this with the outside world. There are a couple of big questions:
- Would people pay for it? Let’s be real: running all these models and doing this whole chain-of-thought process isn’t cheap. Plus, they put so much work into this. They’d have to charge a monthly fee. For professional work, it’s a no-brainer—just a small productivity boost pays for itself almost immediately. But do you feel the same way?
- Is there enough interest out there? Are we looking at a niche tool that only a handful of people would find useful, or is there a real market for something like this?
I’d love to hear what you think. Would a specialized FeatureScript assistant be worth the cost to you or your company? Are we barking up the wrong tree, or does this seem like something that could fill a real need?
Thanks for any thoughts you can share !
Re: [Chatbot Copilot] - We Built a FeatureScript AI Assistant That Outperforms ChatGPT
Congrats! Video demonstration?
The standard rate for integrated AI is around 10 to 15 USD / month. This is the cost of git copilot for visual studio which is a must have for quick questions and repetitive work or code clean up.
Assuming it is as useful as git copilot, I would pay 15 to 30 USD / month for a tool like this. It would need to be an integrated app in the Onshape app side panel, I wouldn't want to have to go to gpt's website for every question. Not sure Onshape allows apps for feature studios though, so it might need to be a web extension that can read the featurescript on the current page then insert or replace code.