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Re: Is ONSHAPE a true replacement for traditional CAD?
Similar to @S1mon, I have been doing CAD since Alias 3.0 on SGI Indy workstations, was an engineer at Honda, and now help design robots. I can't stay away from Onshape for two reasons.
1. Superior collaboration. Google-Docs-style group design work is a gamechanger.
2. Web based software. I, and anyone on my team, can log in to any computer anywhere and have instant access to everything
Re: Is ONSHAPE a true replacement for traditional CAD?
@coleman you said "5. No software updates", but the opposite is true! OS includes improvement updates every 3 weeks, rather than a new version of trad cad every few years. I know you know this, but it's another plus.
Re: Why doesn't Onshape support sketch blocks or sketch scaling?
You should be able to do this by inserting and mating the sketches in an assembly. I guess it is might require a few more steps than throwing them in a 2d sketch, but it also means you can have 3D motion as well (with just 2D "parts") so it's also more flexible...
Re: Why doesn't Onshape support sketch blocks or sketch scaling?
Switching to a more general plug for Onshape, I've been astonished how quickly new team members can master OS fundamentals using the self-paced curriculum that was rolled out in the past year or so. Good luck with your transition- you won't regret it.
Re: Query Explorer feature
Also fyi, I've done a mirror of the FS standard library at GitHub here. (making it easier to see changes). I also normalised it on the nover branch, taking version numbers out of each studio.
Re: AI Assist for PDF management
I suspect that PTC may eventually sprinkle AI on everything, but for now, I would focus on using the tools out there which are already optimized for this. I've had pretty good results with ChatGPT ingesting PDFs and summarizing them. I've also had good results with it translating technical drawings and DFM PPTs from China into English. I don't see these kinds of features being a focus for Onshape.
I've also seen some pretty amazing stuff with AI (Vizcom) doing finished renderings of very roughly sketched industrial design concepts, and layering that on images of famous people and then using another tool to animate those "people" to make short somewhat believable video clips.
I've also been advocating for better AI help with FeatureScript. What I've seen so far is occasionally useful for someone like me who barely can code in FS, but it also makes up a lot of bad code which is frustrating.
All this is a way of saying that I'm very excited by how much progress has been happening in the AI space over the last few years, but I wouldn't count on it being part of Onshape any time soon.
S1mon
Re: New FS: Extract Flat - creates solid body of a Sheet Metal Flat
@joshtargo cool feature! It did jog my memory though and there's already a custom feature doing this. Keep it up though. I've been loving seeing your new features coming through. Cool stuff.
As for setting the name to match another part I don't believe it's possible since the name is a part property and the part properties are calculated after feature regeneration when the model rebuilds so they don't exist for your feature code to access.
Re: Query Explorer feature
Changes in query.fs since 8th October 2020 (FS 1378):
GeometryType now includes ALL_MESH and MIXED_MESH options.
New functions:
- qAllSolidBodies
- qAllModifiableSolidBodiesNoMesh
- qHasAttribute
- qHasAttributeWithValue
- qHasAttributeWithValueMatching
- qOpHoleProfile
- qOpHoleFace
- qToleranceFilter (marked internal)
- qSourceMesh with EntityType
- qEdgeVertex (for getting the edge vertices at start and end rather than having to filter with a qAdjacent)
- qTangentConnectedFaces with a tangency tolerance
- qInFrontOfPlane
- areQueriesEquivalent
- isQueryEmpty
- qCoincidentFilter (marked internal)
Best way to warn user of something without overriding active info messages?
I've got a feature that is reporting some useful info most of the time using reportFeatureInfo(). There are some cases where I'd like to let the user know something isn't quite right, without totally ending the feature and replacing that message. I'd like to turn the feature red and let the user see a message on mouseover of the feature without replacing the message from reportFeatureInfo(). Any way to do this?