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Re: Improvements to Onshape - October 10, 2025
Lots of good stuff here!
Configured variable studios will help clean up "family" designs for sure! The lack of broken shaded views has been thorn in our side forever, nice to see it finally addressed.
Insert "active config" sounds minor but will save quite a bit of time when working with highly configurable things so very welcome. Slow simulation of thin/slender shapes has also been something we've run into quite regularly. Also looking forward to trying out the new render studio layout as I never liked the bottom library thing (especially working on 21.5/9 screens)!
Possibly the biggest thing left on my wish list right now would be getting "exclude from properties" for assemblies!
Re: Improvements to Onshape - October 10, 2025
Very Exciting. Now to re-do all of my assemblies to use this tool. I'll see you all next month when I finally come outside to touch grass
Improvements to Onshape - October 10, 2025
This Onshape update delivers major productivity and collaboration enhancements across the platform — from configurable Variable Studios and improved simulation performance to new enterprise-level security and sharing options. You’ll also find refined drawing tools and UI improvements in CAM and Render Studio. Plus, Onshape AI Advisor makes its in-app debut!
CAD IMPROVEMENTS
AI ADVISOR IN ONSHAPE
Onshape AI Advisor is now available directly inside of Onshape. Onshape AI Advisor is an AI-powered Onshape expert that uses Onshape's vast library of learning materials as its source of truth. Professional and Enterprise company administrators can now access a new preference to enable or disable Onshape AI Advisor. For Enterprise customers, the AI Advisor is disabled by default and must be enabled by an administrator. Important to note: While the Onshape AI Advisor is now integrated into Onshape, it does not have access to your data.CONFIGURABLE VARIABLE STUDIOS
Variable Studios now support configurations, allowing multiple sets of variable values to be defined and referenced across Part Studios and Assemblies.
EXPANDED SUPPORT FOR THIN AND LARGE ASPECT RATIO GEOMETRY IN SIMULATION
Onshape Simulation now supports thin-walled parts and assemblies with large aspect ratio geometry, making it easier to run Linear Static and Modal studies on sheet metal, frames, and similar structures with greater speed and accuracy.
CONFIGURATION OPTIONS ON INSERT
Insert dialogs across Onshape now support inserting the active or default configuration of a part or assembly.
DATA MANAGEMENT IMPROVEMENTS
SEARCH FOR CUSTOM PROPERTIES ON FOLDERS, PUBLICATIONS, AND PROJECTS
Onshape Professional and Enterprise now support searching by custom properties applied to folders, publications and enterprise projects, making it easier to find and organize data by product line, work type, or program phase.
FOLDER/DOCUMENT DIVIDER IMPROVEMENTS
Onshape now remembers the divider position between folders and documents in the Documents view, keeping your preferred layout consistent as you navigate and across sessions.
DRAWINGS IMPROVEMENTS
SHADED BREAK VIEW
Break views in Onshape Drawings now support shaded display. Simply right-click the view, choose Hide/Show, and select Show shaded view to toggle shading on or off.
REMOVE ALL INSPECTION ITEMS FROM A DRAWING
Remove all inspection items at once, making it faster to start fresh when creating new or copied inspection documents.
ENTERPRISE IMPROVEMENTS
EXTERNAL CONNECTIONS
Onshape Enterprise now supports External Connections, enabling secure collaboration between separate enterprises such as OEMs and suppliers. Connections allow data to be shared selectively between organizations, with clear visual indicators, admin approval, and full control over access.
EXPORT CONTROL PERMISSIONS IN ONSHAPE ENTERPRISE
Enterprise administrators can now manage who can export data from Onshape. The new export permission lets admins restrict file exports to selected users or teams, improving control and data security across the organization.
RENDER STUDIO IMPROVEMENTS
RIGHT PANEL NAVIGATION
Render Studio now supports placing the Libraries panel on the right side, freeing up vertical screen space and improving workflow. Tabs have also been reordered — Libraries, Appearance, Environment, then Scene — for a more natural, top-to-bottom workflow.
PROJECTOR MANIPULATORS FOR TEXTURE CONTROL
Render Studio now includes manipulators for texture projectors, providing visual controls to position, rotate, and scale textures directly on your model for precise and intuitive material placement.
WORKSPACE REFERENCES FOR BLOB DATA
You can now create workspace references for non-geometric assets such as HDRI backgrounds, textures, and other rendering data — no version needed.
PCB STUDIO IMPROVEMENTS
SUPPRESS ITEMS FROM IMPORTED ECAD DATA
PCB Studio now supports suppressing components, keep-ins, keep-outs, and outlines from imported ECAD data, keeping assemblies clear while preserving full ECAD integrity for round-trip collaboration.
CAM STUDIO IMPROVEMENTS
USER INTERFACE IMPROVEMENTS FOR VERSIONED TABS AND OPERATION DIALOGS
Editing toolbars are now removed for versioned tabs, and confirmation dialogs display the specific operation name when deleting jobs, machines, setups, tools, or toolpaths.
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.
Remember: The updates listed here are now live for all users when creating new Documents. Over the next few days, these features will also be available in Documents created before this update.
mlaflecheCAD
Re: Custom Feature: Query Variable+
YES! I'm glad you're taking this on. It needs to be a thing.
Re: Improvements to Onshape - September 19th, 2025
I’m hitting reload while on bad airplane WiFi. I know I have a problem.
S1mon
Custom Feature: Query Variable+
-Link to feature up front-
Query Variable has been a game changer for more programmatic workflows that save me from needing to develop custom scripts when I can instead pass other existing features through a QV and get results that way. That being said, there are some more powerful querying techniques which haven't yet been added to the default Query Variable implementation that I'm taking some time to write into an extended toolset. For example: just about everything in the old Query Explorer feature could be used as a QV to enable more parametric workflows involving spatial, geometric, or directional filtering of your queries. My long term goal is to implement all of these Query Explorer features into the new Query Variable feature but I'm starting out small with a few easier lift features and will add more over time.
The first two features in my Query Variable+ implementation are the following:
Tangent(ish) Faces
This one is simple, the qTangentConnectedFaces() function in the standard library already has an overload which allows you to specify an angle tolerance for some flexibility in the definition of the word "tangent" so I just replaced the version in Query Variable with this angular tolerance version. This lets me flood select face groups from cursed not-mesh import geometry and use the selections to create patch faces and create new clean parametric surfaces without having a feature tree to work with.
This is not a mesh.
But with a little bit of curve approximation and resurfacing later it can become usable geometry again. Selecting groups of nearly tangent faces made this much easier to execute.
Matching Bodies
Query Variable comes with the ability to select matching edges or matching faces, why not matching bodies? Well the qMatching feature doesn't allow this selection type so that's why it's not allowed here, but there's a similar function called clusterBodies that does something close to this for cut list purposes. I leveraged this into a qMatchingBodies function that allows you to select a part and the function will return all parts in the studio that clusterBodies identifies as a geometric match for the input. (With some tolerance)
Useful for workflows where you're working with repetitive geometry that's not necessarily the result of a pattern, or if you've willfully ignored the "best practices" instructions of assembly modeling workflows and need to check that your parts actually are still copies of each other at the end of the tree.
Other features I'd like to implement into the list from Query Explorer:
- Geometry filters for face types
- Distance filters
- Direction filters
- Attribute filters for sheet metal and frames
- Cap entity filters
- …And more things I'm sure will be useful to someone at some point that I have yet to discover
Re: Improvements to Onshape - September 19th, 2025
I should also look at my @john_mcclary bingo card to pick items that will get me closer to Bingo!!!!!
