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Best Of
Re: Improvements to Onshape - November 22nd, 2024
So many goodies! Pause regeneration is particularly exciting! Flatten has also come up for me a decent amount and this will be super helpful so I don't have to leave Onshape to get it.
Re: Improvements to Onshape - November 22nd, 2024
Ok. Flatten is one of the best new things that was just added for free to Onshape!
Here's a flattened version of a part where I had simulated fabric wrapping some molded foam for a headband of a product. It does take a while to process this, but it's so much better than having to use another package.
The "origin" and mate connector selections are a little weird. They're not used in the demo, but in order to have the flat pattern appear where I would like, it sometimes helps to have the surface split at the "origin". Then add a mate connector at that same location, but with the Z pointing into the part.
Also not shown in the demo above, is the facet view, which is also helpful. You can see how the surfaces have been tessellated to simulate the stretching/flattening.
I'm looking forward to more development and in depth demos. Actually I just looked, and here's @GregBrown with a more full demo:

Re: Improvements to Onshape - November 22nd, 2024
Flatten is huge. I've needed that a number of times, but I agree with @Caden_Armstrong - I very much wish that it was able to generate geometry without a round-trip through an export/import. I have to assume that will come later?
Sketch profile inspector should really help a ton of people clean up DXFs. This is a great quality of life thing, and it (obviously to Onshape) comes up on the forums all the time.
Béziers raising/lowering cleanly is a very nice fix. Thank you! I'm glad my cranky response to the 1.188 release was addressed.
Pausing regen is great. It would be cool if it was more flexible about previewing the selection, the way @EvanReese 's Selection Fillet works with its pause regen built in. I suspect that would take some new Featurescript functionality to separate out a preview from a full blown regen.

Re: Trying to use the shell feature.
OK I figured it out with your suggestions. I redid the sketch like the outline, revolved it. Then sketched a circle on the bottom and the shell command did its thing. Thanks for the help.
Re: Improvements to Onshape - November 22nd, 2024
Definitely some good stuff in here!
I'm a little bit puzzled by the flatten not being able to produce a surface in the part studio though… That seems like it would be useful… You can export but it creates a download, why not at least offer a "save as new tab". Even better why not just be a feature that generates the face so that it can update parametrically?

Re: Improvements to Onshape - November 1st, 2024
The toothpick was still coming out wet. It needed a few more minutes in the oven.
Re: Improvements to Onshape - November 1st, 2024
Anyone keeping track of the time new versions come out? It's getting pretty late on the East coast by now…
Improvements to Onshape - November 22nd, 2024
PART STUDIOS
FLATTEN SURFACES
Flatten surfaces is a new Analysis tool that generates a planar surface from one or more contiguous non-planar surfaces. This is useful to evaluate the flat (cut) shape for a paint mask, decal, or text curves. The result can be exported to PARASOLID, STL, DXF, or SVG file format.PAUSE REGENERATION
Part Studio regeneration can be temporarily paused while multiple configuration, variable table values, or feature parameters are modified.SKETCH PROFILE INSPECTOR
Tiny gaps between sketch entities are difficult to detect, especially in complex imported DXF files. The Profile inspector, a new sketch diagnostics tool, quickly finds all the open ends of non-construction geometry.SKETCH BEZIER CURVE
Elevating the degree of a Bezier sketch entity increases the number of control points while maintaining the exact geometry. Lowering the degree reduces the number of control points, preserving the geometry where possible and approximating the geometry as closely as possible when exact geometry cannot be maintained.
THICKNESS ANALYSIS
Thickness analysis is now available for Onshape Professional and Onshape Education Enterprise users.
DRAWINGS
PASTE AS TABLE WITH FORMATTING
Tables created by pasting cells from Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel now import text styles (font size, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough) and cell width and height. Note that if a style is applied to only part of the cell text, it is not preserved.
RELEASE MANAGEMENT
ADDING OBJECTS FROM OTHER DOCUMENTS
Onshape Professional users can now add parts, assemblies, drawings or files from other documents to a single release candidate and release them together.RENDER STUDIO
LEGACY RENDER STUDIO BETA TABS ⚠️
Render Studio was officially released in Onshape 1.181 (May 17th, 2024). Access to the beta version of Render Studio will cease on February 29th, 2025 and all exisiting Render Studio beta tabs created prior to the official release will be automatically deleted on this date. Only rendered output created from those tabs will remain.SELECT MATCHING INSTANCES
All instances of the same part or subassembly can now be selected by right-clicking and choosing Select matching instances, regardless of where they appear in the assembly structure.
ISOLATE TRANSFORMS AND PROJECTORS
All entities added to a Transform or Projector can now be isolated on screen with a simple right-click.
MOBILE
MERGE LINES ON iOS
Merge lines can now be displayed on an iOS device for a clear high-level overview of the development timeline.
LEARNING CENTER
CERTIFICATION
The Onshape Learning Center has upgraded the certification experience. Both exams are now fully embedded in the Learning Center and do not require navigation to a separate testing platform. The Certified Onshape Associate has also been upgraded with completely new data sets to test your CAD knowledge.
API QUICKSTART
Building off of our previously released Introduction to the Onshape API course, we have now added an Onshape REST API Quickstart video explaining how to create a simple application for personal use.Please take a moment to try out these new features and improvements and leave your comments below. For a detailed list of all the changes in this update, please see the changelog.

Re: Improvements to Onshape - November 22nd, 2024
Christmas comes every three weeks with Onshape.
Pause regen! no longer do I need to include that option in slow/complex features. What a life saver.
Flatten is great, but its a bit annoying that it only exports. Post-flattening workflow is going to require a reimport of the file.
But still, super excited to see flatten get used. Opens up a lot of options that were going to be incredibly difficult with featurescript.