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Re: Improvements to Onshape - November 21, 2025
I can assure you it's been 3 weeks. I have a repeating calendar event just in case.
S1mon
Re: Improvements to Onshape - November 21, 2025
Has it been 3 weeks since the last update???? Asking for a friend.
Re: AI geometry feature naming
Same general strategy here but my modeling process has shifted towards mega features that do more powerful stuff with fewer items cluttering the feature tree. Why have 500 fillet features when you can set up 3 query variables that grab all of your convex vertical edges that get one size, all the concave edges that get a different size, and all the top faces that get a third size? Usually when you're designing for manufacturing you're following a schedule of rules exactly like that with your parts and it's recently become mind numbingly easy to implement those rules explicitly in your document with the advent of QVs and QV+. Now the prospect of naming features is much less daunting when you can replace 500 features in a tree with 50.
Re: AI geometry feature naming
Yes, I wish there was a way to automate this, but I'm really not sure how I would expect an AI to do it, since I'm not sure how one would do it as person. Can you explain to another human your heuristics for naming? Would those rules match everyone's?
Some more practical rules that I've learned over many years:
Group features into functional chunks and put them in a folder and name the folder. When you start having more that a dozen features, you need to start doing this. When you have 100s of features, you absolutely have to at least do this. Keep your collapsed feature tree so that you do not need to scroll to see the whole thing.
The other rule of thumb is that if you find yourself stumbling around trying to find a critical feature that you need to change or tweak over and over again, take the time and give it a good name. I do not name every last fillet or chamfer. It's not worth the time. I do name folders and key features like layout sketches. I also make more and more use of variables to call out important dimensions.
You always want to be nice to future you (six months later when you need to make an update), or your coworkers if you get hit by a bus.
S1mon
Composite Parts - how to use them?
A few things are a bit strange:
- I added two (of the same) inserts using the Point Derive FS. At first they didn't have their material set, so I set one to brass, and the second insert didn't pick up the material setting. I went to the part studio where the insert was created, and set the material, and then both inserts picked up the correct material. Is there a better way to manage this?
- With an open composite, the mass properties work in the part studio, but in the next level assembly, the BOM reports "no value" for the mass. I tried a closed composite, but that made things worse. Then there was no material defined in the part studio (and I assumed it would treat the composite as a single material, if I assigned it)
S1mon
Re: Custom Feature: Triad Transform
@Konst_Sh excellent suggestion, I got surface snapping to work right away. Then I spent 4 hours wrestling with gimbal lock to try to get the rotational information to smoothly update as you drag the parts over a surface. I think I'll push an update with positional snapping first and have a good long think about how to best implement the relative rotational updates. My gut says quaternions are the way out but that's just a guess to be honest.
@ry_gb the Evan I am referring to is an absolute champion of asking for things which are architecturally at complete odds with the last thing you did on the screen. It's one of the things that defines how I approach modeling and feature development. Plan for someone to pull the pin on a grenade and leave it in your hands.
Re: Custom Feature: Triad Transform
I've watched a few deep dive videos from Freya Holmer, they have an attribution in one of my yet-unpublished features for their crash course on spline geometry mathematics. I watched that quaternion video last time I was debating getting into rotational coordinate system hell in featurescript and I've found myself there again. Might be time to write quatUtils and give it a shot.