Best Of

OK everyone, it's been a little while since I've commented on this thread, but I think by now you will have seen today's (March 13, 2025) release and will understand why…

Thanks to A LOT of the feedback here (sincere thanks to you all!) we went back to work on the feature and have incorporated many suggestions, made many improvements, increased performance, gave it better usability and thus deemed it ready to be included as a native feature in Onshape.

For those following along the major things we addressed:

• made the array parameter list only show current selected point (shorter list/menu, faster to get to the right data…)
• allow variables and expressions in the dimensions for the points
• enhanced the orthogonal path selection
• included distance and angle display/input text boxes in the manipulator
• a bunch of general manipulator usability and cosmetic improvements (incidentally this fullTriadManipulator is available through FeatureScript to use in your own Custom features!)
• Edge inputs are parametric (i.e. the "curve" type enum
• enhancements to derivative controls
• and more

Our intent has been to provide a general feature suitable for routing wires, flexible hoses, rigid pipes, frames etc whilst not getting too overly application specific. I hope that it can inspire some great Custom features if deep application specificity is required, as well as be a popular foundational tools for use across multiple workflows.

Again, thanks to all on this thread for a) following along so far(!) and b) providing valuable input.

I'll make some movies in the coming days that show off some of the features.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/79f48e026fae1d5525035ba5/w/f2b7af08a427d76ea53e406c/e/77cbce2af33dc4b405619793

From looking through falling coffee mug references, the first element I figured I needed was these wobbly lines where the liquid has not quite dispersed into droplets, both detached from the main fluid body (as a not-yet-dispersed spray type deal), and gathering at the edges of the main body (again, before it disperses). I wrote a very hacked together, not at all robust or up to my standards featurescript to take a curve, chop it into irregular pieces, draw circles of pseudo-random radii at the cut points, and loft it all together. Then I just revolved a cap at each end.

Most of the modeling for the main fluid body was just a lot of solid lofts with a lot of cross-section sketches. The two tricks here was to get wider and thinner further from the mug, and to have the coffee gathering at the edges with the wobbly lines basically looking like it’s trying to escape. I was a little lazy with my cross-sections, as it probably ought to be thinnest nearer to the center, but I used ellipses instead since I didn’t think it’d be too substantial a difference.

The lower portion of the main fluid body is a few amorphous blob sketches that I allowed to twist wildly when I lofted them together. This created some weird knife-thin edges that I added a wobbly line to. This is just placed overlapping the upper portion.

I definitely modeled everything with the final render camera angle in mind, as a lot of weird sharp edges are blocked from view, and the main fluid body is incredibly flat.

The spray is another quick featurescript I threw together that draws spheres of pseudo-random radii within a defined box.

I used the decal tool for the mug text and for the floor texture. I had made the floor texture to test the decal tool when it was first released; it is a picture of my office’s break room floor. The cabinets are simple, just have to remember to leave gaps between and behind the doors.

I used different settings for the different coffee parts, but the most important was the main swoop (as I call it in the document, the Schwoop). The wave parameters were key here.

Overall, there was a lot of testing early on to determine what elements I needed, but once I settled on them, it was just a lot of lofting.