Onshape has been acquired by PTC

adrian_vlzkz

Noticing all the team switch their company in LinkedIn to PTC... is Onshape ceasing to exist as a company?

NeilCooke

@adrian_vlzkz it is true that we are all officially PTC employees now (and will all soon have @ptc.com email addresses). Onshape will exist as a product, a brand and a business unit of PTC. 

3dcad

So it's customercare@ptc.com if we need anything? 

don_williams909

@jim_heppelmann - Loved the "Open Letter'.  I read it the first day that the news broke.  I'm a HUGE PTC Creo fan, and also a fan of Onshape. 
To me, the merger of these products could very well be the best of both worlds coming together into what could be my ideal CAD platform.

I especially liked the history of how CAD has grown from UNIX and mainframes, to PC's, and now to SaaS.

I look forward to the day when y'all finally make a great Neural Interface....

:-)

Cheers, and Best of Luck!

don_williams909

jim_heppelmann said:

Here is what I would do if I were CEO of PTC.  Grab a chair.   ;-)

Jim Heppelmann
CEO @ PTC

Love this...  "If I were CEO..."  LOL...  Sounds like  you've made a great plan!

don_williams909

brian_brady said:

@don_williams909 You are right that Creo does more, it's been around the block a few more times so it should. But for machine design at least, I think Onshape does almost everything it needs to do. The difference being that Onshape is more friendly and intuitive in most respects than Creo (or SW). I teach CAD beginners in college and they love Onshape and start being productive much faster than when I used Creo just a few years ago. Not every industry or segment of industry needs all of the features packed into the big boys. As long as Onshape continues to improve and operate independently of Creo and PTC (at least from a customer point of view), then I see a place for Onshape.

By the way (this comment is aimed at everybody), after my students use Onshape, almost to the student they hate going back to SW, Creo, or any other CAD system. These are your future engineers and designers.

I hear you...  But just so you know (and I'm sure you do), "Intuitive" is different for everyone.  I found Creo to be very intuitive.  All that means is, that the way in which it operates follows a person's normal sense of order and expectations of work flow, or in simpler terms, the natural way in which a person thinks.  For example, I "do" find Onshape to be intuitive, but i come from a background of several other CAD systems, Unigraphics, BobCAD, Creo, AutoCad, etc.  I find AutoCad to be the least intuitive of them all.  Having knowledge of several products gives me a point of comparison.

I highly commend you for teaching our youth to use Onshape and other CAD packages in college... my wife is a teacher, and most people don't value their contribution to society to the degree that they should.  That said, sooner or later those young engineers and designers are going to want features that only those other CAD systems have.  And that is the reason why I'm so totally psyched to have PTC working with Onshape to really boost their capabilities.  Imagine having the features and capabilities of Creo, in the highly intuitive SaaS Onshape...  You're right.  Those students wouldn't ever want to go back to the other software products. 
Unless of course they need something like Comsol Multiphysics...  ;-)

brian_brady

don_williams909 said:

brian_brady said:

@don_williams909 You are right that Creo does more, it's been around the block a few more times so it should. But for machine design at least, I think Onshape does almost everything it needs to do. The difference being that Onshape is more friendly and intuitive in most respects than Creo (or SW). I teach CAD beginners in college and they love Onshape and start being productive much faster than when I used Creo just a few years ago. Not every industry or segment of industry needs all of the features packed into the big boys. As long as Onshape continues to improve and operate independently of Creo and PTC (at least from a customer point of view), then I see a place for Onshape.

By the way (this comment is aimed at everybody), after my students use Onshape, almost to the student they hate going back to SW, Creo, or any other CAD system. These are your future engineers and designers.

I hear you...  But just so you know (and I'm sure you do), "Intuitive" is different for everyone.  I found Creo to be very intuitive.  All that means is, that the way in which it operates follows a person's normal sense of order and expectations of work flow, or in simpler terms, the natural way in which a person thinks.  For example, I "do" find Onshape to be intuitive, but i come from a background of several other CAD systems, Unigraphics, BobCAD, Creo, AutoCad, etc.  I find AutoCad to be the least intuitive of them all.  Having knowledge of several products gives me a point of comparison.

I highly commend you for teaching our youth to use Onshape and other CAD packages in college... my wife is a teacher, and most people don't value their contribution to society to the degree that they should.  That said, sooner or later those young engineers and designers are going to want features that only those other CAD systems have.  And that is the reason why I'm so totally psyched to have PTC working with Onshape to really boost their capabilities.  Imagine having the features and capabilities of Creo, in the highly intuitive SaaS Onshape...  You're right.  Those students wouldn't ever want to go back to the other software products. 
Unless of course they need something like Comsol Multiphysics...  ;-)

@don_williams909 I had previously used Pro/E and then Creo to teach my students. I switched to Onshape about 3 years ago. I found Creo to me pretty intuitive most of the time (Pro/E, not so much). Definitely more so than I find SW. The one thing my students struggled with most when using Creo was the weak vs. strong dimensioning and initially scaling sketches. Feature creation was mostly straightforward. Alas, our college has switched to SW based on programs that focus more on CAD than my program. I continue to use Onshape for designing/modeling but use SW for introducing analysis. Today it crashed hard for me and about half of my students when simply attempting to copy a study and change study parameters. We all groaned because we hadn't saved recently since we had gotten so used to not having to do so with Onshape.

don_williams909

brian_brady said:

"...The one thing my students struggled with most when using Creo was the weak vs. strong dimensioning and initially scaling sketches. Feature creation was mostly straightforward. Alas, our college has switched to SW based on programs that focus more on CAD than my program. I continue to use Onshape for designing/modeling but use SW for introducing analysis. Today it crashed hard for me and about half of my students when simply attempting to copy a study and change study parameters. We all groaned because we hadn't saved recently since we had gotten so used to not having to do so with Onshape."

The strong dimensioning thing is actually very useful.  Even more useful is the fact that each dimension has it's own metadata code which can be used to control other dimensions, an also can be used to tie to parameters to drive title blocks, drawings, and all sort of good things.
Solidworks... yeah, I never could truly understand the hype over it.  Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty good tool, and does some nice things, but then I've used Creo's sheet metal module, and it's the best thing going.  Although I have to say some things are easier in Onshape.  Being able to sketch in the Flat Pattern view is a major Plus for OS.
Remember the mantra to pass on to your students "Save Early; Save Often!". Print it out in big letters and post it on the wall... your students will thank you!

owen_sparks

Hi.

Any thoughts of any mechanisms of collaboration between Creo and Onshape users?  Dumb solids of course lose all the design intent and feature definitions when passed around but with different feature sets and even different modeling kernels between these systems then anything more seems like a pipe dream! But just perhaps you good folks have some thoughts?  (I have a vested interest as our Design Dept. uses Creo, and our Production Engineering dept. uses Onshape, Sometimesworks and even a bit of Confusion180.)

As far as the buy-out goes I'm very torn.  I've always had, and continue to have, absolute trust in the engineering types at onshape who are doing their absolute best to develop the very best platform they can.  The business side has always worried me a bit though.  However it's the Onshape folks that have built up this big bucket of trust that are telling us that it's a good thing...  So I guess it's time to park those reservations, hunker down and judge the actions as well as the words as time progresses.  We're one update down and so far nothing has been painted green, so that's a good start at least.

Cheers all,

Owen S.

3dcad

owen_sparks said:

Hi.

Any thoughts of any mechanisms of collaboration between Creo and Onshape users?  Dumb solids of course lose all the design intent and feature definitions when passed around but with different feature sets and even different modeling kernels between these systems then anything more seems like a pipe dream! But just perhaps you good folks have some thoughts?  (I have a vested interest as our Design Dept. uses Creo, and our Production Engineering dept. uses Onshape, Sometimesworks and even a bit of Confusion180.)

..

Step ap 242 perhaps?

gareth_farrington

I want to wish the OnShape team well with their new ownership.

As a hobbyist user, I really hope that I can continue to use OnShape in some capacity for CAD. I've been using that other free parametric package for years. Every time I feel as if I have been abused by its user interface. With OnShape I feel like someone really cares about me enjoying my time with the product and not being frustrated. It takes real, daily, customer focus and determination to build something as large as OnShape where the UI and UX are completely consistent throughout the product. From my day job as Software Engineer I know all the ways that a product can be led astray from usability. Thank you for your hard work.

I would like to pay for OnShape. I don't know if I can justify a Standard or Pro license for my hobbies. But I would gladly had over, say, $500 a year. And if you were to do CAM, I would never again have to visit that other package again.

philip_thomas

@owen_sparks - There are currently no plans to provide feature level compatibility between Onshape and Creo - this is STILL exceptionally difficult even when both products are owned by the same company. That said, PTC has some very cool interoperability tools that we could look at at some point in the future.

@gareth_farrington - thank you for your kind words, they are part of the emotional paycheck of working here. There are no plans to get rid of the free plan. You are welcome to use it as much as you want. If at anytime in the future your efforts are directed towards commercial pursuits, then we can talk about a paid plan

Nickolas_Lockard

philip_thomas said:

Peeps - Ilya beat me to it.

We wouldn't have done this if it put at risk this amazing technology, product and community.

The FAQ that PTC put out is not just marketing fluff. I have been in (some) of the meetings and heard Jim (Heppelmann) speak candidly of his excitement to use the Onshape culture as a model for PTC moving forward - nothing is changing. You the community are happy and well supported and we look forward to accelerating our development (and ability to make you even happier) by leveraging the significantly greater resources of PTC. We are reporting to the same managers and are not changing our (agile) development process. Moreover, the FAQ is very detailed about things that WE worried about  (staying on Parasolid). We are the same people, same process, same mentality but with deeper pockets and a bigger market footprint. This is a win win. So prognosticate all you want, judge us by what we deliver - and trust me, there is a lot of cool sh*t in the pipeline  

Sweet! Now, can you make OS not brutally slow when working in large, native contexts? The 'design in context' tools are really limiting, as is the derive (you lose the parent sketches). Basically, whenever I work in assemblies (because that's the WHOLE point of CAD, *ahem*), OS takes 30 minutes to make one simple sketch. And the advice I've seen to speed things up is esoteric, unexplainable, weird, not practical, or just doesn't actually save any time. Oh, and it's not my wifi or computer. It's your backend.

Edward_O_Thorp

Excellent Jon! +EV to you!!