Improvements to Onshape - June 5, 2015

lougallo

Update day is here!  Today we are introducing our new Part Studio compare tool as well as the ability to save Named views.  A few other highly requested improvements also made the cut so let's take a look...

Highlights include:

1. NEW Part Studio compare - Compare Part Studio workspaces, versions and history right from the version and history panels!  Compare shows units, feature lists, sketch and feature differences both graphically and in side by side dialogs (even which options were set for the feature).
   
   
   
   
2. NEW Named view - Orient, save and restore your own custom views (In view menu)
   
   
   
   
3. NEW Symmetric sketch contraint - select two like-entities and a centerline to constrain them symmetrically about it,
   
   
   
   
4. Add/change emails to your Onshape account. (You must verify your new email before you can make it your primary email)
   
   
   
   
5. Measurement precision has been increased as follows:
   Inches = 4 decimals
   mm, cm, m, ft, yd = 3 decimals
   
   

As with every release there are always small tweaks and improvements made to increase performance and stability across the service. Big thanks goes out to all the development teams that continue to amaze us with new capabilities.  We hope you find these improvements helpful and we have so many more things to share in the coming weeks/months.  As always your feedback is welcome so please let us know what you think!  ~Lou

_Ðave_

Measurement precision, Thank You Very Much

3dexter

Congratulations Lou Gallo and all Onshape team, great job!

Fantastic !!!

I loved the improvements 1, 2, 3 and 5 will all be very useful.

You have no idea how to improve 1 will be useful in my day to day !!!

I can not imagine how Onshape had not improved 5.

I was very excited about all these improvements.

Thank you !!!

andrew_troup

I am REALLY happy about the symmetric constraint, and I'm encouraged that this sort of relatively unglamorous but rather fundamental enhancement is being treated as important.

Named view is also big for me. I like the look of the interface, on first acquaintance. I will be interested to see if the functionality has been integrated with "Section view"  - if not, I hope it will be in due course.

For me (because I model in mm, and 0.01mm was OK for the sort of work I can currently shift to Onshape) the measurement issue was not a drop dead one, but because I understand the inch system intimately, I'm delighted this serious issue has been addressed, for those who are stuck with working in inches.

nav

Really nice work guys. Congrats to all OS team

andrew_troup

The further I get into it, the more benefits I see from the Onshape approach to versioning.

I say thay, having had custody of top-level folders with perhaps as many as twenty sub-folders containing discrete iterations (and in a very few cases, maybe three times that many, in the case of a design which has been subjected to continuous improvement over a decade or more).
And each iteration (in Solidworks or equivalent) requires a folder-full of matching files. If a few of those get renamed or mis-filed ... I don't think I need to say more. And, of course, the older ones are vulnerable to stranding, by version change issues...

I wouldn't want to go to the extreme of a single document spanning the entire history of an assembly with so many variations, but the savings available by condensing the current starburst into a compact cluster of documents, each document spanning a handful of review iterations and releases, and potentially replacing entire folders, would be considerable.

Naturally there will have to be some serious improvements in navigability of large assemblies and complex parts, but that's reasonably routine and cosmetic, provided the concept has 'good bones'.

I get the sense that the OnS development team are (very sensibly) first nailing down the bits which have multiple effects on downstream decisions - and I can see that version comparison is one of those bits.

On that topic, it seems to me that organic growth, to the extent that it lacks a plan involving deep forethought, tends to work well in the short term, but badly in the long term. I'm talking here about a conceptual plan, and specifically about working out the optimum critical sequencing ahead of time. I'm not meaning "plan" in terms of a schedule, the sort of thing a fresh-faced MBA would obsess about.

To ask a team forging into virgin territory for a schedule seems to me a bit like asking an explorer (say, Captain Cook) to submit maps for approval before embarking on a voyage of discovery.

3dexter

@andrew_troup the new feature "Named view" does not work with a view sections! 

jakeramsley

andrew_troup said:

Named view is also big for me. I like the look of the interface, on first acquaintance. I will be interested to see if the functionality has been integrated with "Section view"  - if not, I hope it will be in due course.

Currently it just moves the camera back to the same position it was along with being stored with perspective/orthographic.  This is just the first iteration and there are some improvements we have intended for it.

3dcad

jakeramsley said:
Currently it just moves the camera back to the same position it was along with being stored with perspective/orthographic.  This is just the first iteration and there are some improvements we have intended for it.

Hopefully improvements would include visible adjustable dimensions and comments + one button export to png (link)

Edit: I would also like to see 'speed bar' for adjusting transition speed. Named views are very handy when showing model to customer but it gives better impression when movement is a bit slower to better see 'the trails' of movement. During design & setting up views faster is better since too slow would be very annoying.

I need to do some more testing before commenting other updates, sounds great though.

andrew_troup

Improvements I'd like to see to the EXCELLENT Named View facility:

1) 1-click export to png  (what do you mean by "link", @3dcad? - if you mean, insert the png as a new tab in the Onshape document, I like that suggestion)

If Onshape was platform specific, it would be nice if "Export to png" could open the resulting document in (say) MS Paint for adding comments etc - but given that it's not, I can see this being desirable within Onshape, for productivity reasons. It also opens up the possibility to add 2D or 3D reference dimensions which show up only in that view, which I presume is roughly what @3dcad is suggesting. This last addition is, I expect, rather burdensome.

2) A simpler addition:
When the cursor focus is on the list of named views, I would like the scroll wheel to scroll the screen display to scroll through the named views. I often use named views on large assemblies to check for clashes in key areas after design changes, and anything which speeds this up has to be good news. It would be extra cool if a given view could quickly be invoked by typing the first digit(s) of the name (I usually 'name' such views with numbers)

3) Extend saved state of Named Views to include section status (which I mentioned in a previous post), and hide/show status (which I did not)

3dcad

andrew_troup said:

Improvements I'd like to see to the EXCELLENT Named View facility:

1) 1-click export to png  (what do you mean by "link", @3dcad? - if you mean, insert the png as a new tab in the Onshape document, I like that suggestion)

If Onshape was platform specific, it would be nice if "Export to png" could open the resulting document in (say) MS Paint for adding comments etc - but given that it's not, I can see this being desirable within Onshape, for productivity reasons. It also opens up the possibility to add 2D or 3D reference dimensions which show up only in that view, which I presume is roughly what @3dcad is suggesting. This last addition is, I expect, rather burdensome.

I left the link idea a bit open because I was thinking tabs at first, but I don't want to have too much tabs before they are somehow reoriented (link to another discussion for improving tabs).
Currently I would need this feature to grab images with some dimension and comments into printable assembly directions. But the idea of having link is for future where I imagine all assembly instructions being just on a web page that has images linked straight to live model in Onshape.
Maybe there could be a specific tab for such things in Onshape that holds multiple Named views together with animations and this way product assembly instructions could be just a link to Onshape tab.

About adding comments in external software, I would totally disagree. If you make just a slight change to model you would need to comment again or keep external (photoshop) file where comments are in another layer - this is THE pain I'm currently facing with my assembly instructions (cad + image processing + final pdf = 3 different versions).
I know this was not your point but just wanted to highlight my need to comment inside Onshape and then export to image (at this point).

3dexter

@3dcad a great solution would be something similar to SolidWorks MBD (link to video).

On the possibility of exporting seen as a PNG image, it would be very useful to use in presentations, manuals, technical documentation, but as I have related forum would be interesting to have the option to export a PNG image without the background, which is the big difference this format!

Currently I use Photoshop to cut and remove the bottom of the Onshape images, the result is excellent but a lot of work!

Thank you.

andrew_troup

@3dcad
Thanks for those clarifications. Makes perfect sense.

pete_yodis

Love the geometry compare addition.  Can I make an enhancement request to that enhancement?  I would like to be able to execute a boolean function (subtract) between the comparable geometry.  This would allow me to actually measure the geometry differences between the bodies and also have volume calculated for mass information.  This is invaluable for casting to machining comparisons of housings and things of that nature.  I can verify enough machining allowance has been figured for in a cast design.  I can then also use the calculated volume of metal being removed under machining to estimate machining cost.

pete_yodis

pete_yodis said:

Love the geometry compare addition.  Can I make an enhancement request to that enhancement?  I would like to be able to execute a boolean function (subtract) between the comparable geometry.  This would allow me to actually measure the geometry differences between the bodies and also have volume calculated for mass information.  This is invaluable for casting to machining comparisons of housings and things of that nature.  I can verify enough machining allowance has been figured for in a cast design.  I can then also use the calculated volume of metal being removed under machining to estimate machining cost.

I should add, it might be nice to have that boolean function show up in another tab.  I'm not sure whether it would be better for the result to be static or dynamic... meaning changes to either part studio would update in the compare studio - or whether it would be a static capture in a point in time when the compare was enacted.  Either would have value.

andrew_troup

I very much like the idea of facilitating boolean comparisons, but I do wonder if it needs to be explicitly supported with a dedicated feature.

One strong ethos in Onshape, it seems to me, and a crucial point of difference with legacy MCAD, is to keep capabilities broad and shallow (aka accessible and simple), rather than narrow and deep. 

I personally think @pete_yodis ' excellent suggestion would be even better if an easy way of doing it was either discovered or provided using a more general-purpose functionality (like, say, "Insert body into (another) Part studio"), implemented in such a way that the two versions arrived with the same relativity to the origin.

pete_yodis

@andrew_troup Insert part, or base part, or derived part, is another request of mine and would be fine as well.  I figured with the compare functionality showing the two part studios overlapped on one another, Onshape must be getting close to what we are asking for in some shape or form.  The insert part method would then be a dynamic one.  To have a static capture in time, you could export the bodies as say a parasolid to another tab and then compare the "frozen" parasolid bodies.  You are right about their broad approach, but that could also be because they are rounding out as large as a scope as soon as possible and leaving the automation for later.  More automation can come  through the API if need be.  This is when functionality will really skyrocket, when large and small players can help iterate on top of a broad foundation.

ilya_baran

@andrew_troup  and @pete_yodis
I'm really enjoying reading this discussion -- it very much parallels our thinking, in terms of providing relatively simple but general and orthogonal tools whose power comes from being able to combine them rather than knowing the ins-and-outs of "narrow and deep" functionality.  For the boolean-then-measure case, once we do have the ability to dynamically import parts from one part studio into another (and we are working on this), that would indeed be a good workflow.  And yes, we are also working on customization tools like APIs to allow users and partners to streamline workflows.

pete_yodis

Great things @Ilya_baran and @andrew_troup It's fun for us to be a part of it too.

brucebartlett

Hey @pete_yodis what do you think of the named views, is this the start of MBD?

Really love the new symmetric command, another 1 ticked off my list of improvements. 

pete_yodis

@brucebartlett I hope so!  Haven't dug in too much yet... little busy with the day job lately.  Testing and trying to fix things faster than I break them, hah!

3dcad

I have created new discussion for Named views:
https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/1039/enhancement-for-named-views