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Re: I absolutely love Onshape!
I would say that you're correct and cabinets can just be done with some simple sketches. We've been using 2D for almost 30 years. But we switched to Onshape for a number of reasons, I can highlight a few here.
- 3D, while not necessary for cabinets, is still helpful when dealing with mass customization. Our product is engineered to order and we work with some of the top design firms in the country. Being able to show them their design in 3D is helpful in building out that design. It's also helpful for the manufacturing floor, giving them more ways to see details they potentially never worked on before.
- FS helps make 3D make sense. One of the reasons we never swapped over to something like SolidWorks was because building a cabinet in 3D takes way longer than in 2D, with the only ROI being the above point, which wasn't enough bang for buck. By using templates and custom features, we can whip up a 3D kitchen referencing all of our specifications very quickly. In addition, we've built a lot of metadata into our custom features that allow us to automatically generate real time cutlists of our models. It cannot be stressed enough that without getting our parts from the model, 3D wouldn't make sense for us.
- 3D + FS has reduced on boarding. We are able to bring on new engineers about 3x faster because they now have a way to interact with our specifications, and we have custom features that build our cabinets and add detail. These custom features have business rules built into them that remove the amount of tribal knowledge needed that the cabinet industry is quite notorious for.
These are just a couple reasons, but I would say if we did just swap to Onshape without making these custom workflows and custom features, it would have been difficult to justify doing 3D at all. For many cabinet shops, drawings are just pretty pictures and the carpenter is the artist. We are trying to move some of the artistry to the digital world and we've done that pretty successfully.
Re: Announcing The Onsherpa
Yep! Now I have an actual answer when people ask where they can find my features
Re: Home projects show and tell
Thanks for sharing them! I love this idea as a general thread. That french cleat (or whatever you'd call that) on the window sill pot is great
Re: Announcing The Onsherpa
Cool cool cool! also - the list of all your FS with gif animations: super nice! https://www.theonsherpa.com/custom-features
Re: How to turn these 3 sketches into a solid?
I checked your document and saw the picture of the joystick you are trying to model in the other tab. I don't believe you can get there with the approach you are trying. You probably have to model it with curves and surfaces. But they would not be 3 sketches like you have now. Each curve would represent the tangent line of an arc in the finished model, or where two surfaces meet.
Another approach… the joystick does not seem too organic… you may be able to "fake it" with traditional modeling. The center portion looks like a flat rectangle. The grip portions could be a sweep.
Fair warning, its difficult to model this joystick.
These 3 courses, starting with the curves course, will help you if you go the surfacing route:
Re: Sheet metal part turns into multiple parts.
Re: Why doesn't the spur gear feature script update properly when using a variable studio
Fixes and a bunch of other improvements are available here;
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/398504e1cabca3abfcaa15e3/v/1d36c50b57b151c16a98908c/e/362561dc150d4cef514ae2b9
dbaarda
Re: CAM Studio
Another First Robotics mentor joining the chorus. Our students teach themselves to use Onshape in Project Lead the Way and woodshop, exporting to laser cutters and 3D Printers for coursework and hobby projects. But toolpaths for our CNC mill and router require a cumbersome export to Fusion or VCarve Pro. Give the thousands of FRC and FTC team members- the next generation of engineers- access to integrated CAM in high school and college and they will be Onshape customers for life.
Re: I absolutely love Onshape!
We are a high end custom cabinet manufacturer. Interestingly enough, we have used Onshape since 2017 with the understanding that it is not suited for architecture. That being said, we swapped over from Vectorworks because we saw the benefit in being able to customize Onshape using FeatureScript and the API.
Onshape is definitely not built for architectural design, but you can customize it so that it can be used for it. What we essentially did was superimpose a cabinetry CAD system over top of Onshape by developing a large suite of custom features. Very few of our original team understood how to use mechanical CAD software, but because we were able to make our own UI and workflow, they are now making large kitchens without any assistance.
I'm not necessarily saying that anyone coming over from the architectural world needs to build their own CAD system, but if there are hurdles in using Onshape because of the paradigm shift, there might be some custom features that would close that gap enough for you to enjoy the benefits of Onshape.