Improvements to Onshape - November 12th, 2019

cody_armstrong

We've had some exciting news recently, but nothing slows down our release cadence. So here we are with another update packed with features requested by you! Let's dive in.

CAD IMPROVEMENTS

COMPOSITE PARTS

You can now create Composite parts consisting of parts, surfaces, curves, and points. Composite parts are treated as one part in the Bill of Materials and when using Release Management.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/134l48bq8w

INSERT DIALOG IMPROVEMENTS

You will find a new "Advanced Search" button when inserting in Onshape. This makes it possible to filter and search by custom properties from within the Insert dialog.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/cod09fxqck

INTERFERENCE DETECTION IMPROVEMENTS

Improvements have been made to Interference Detection that include an automatic zoom to fit when selecting an interference from the list, as well as a bounding box highlighting the interference in the graphics.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/snds0fvnr9

SECTION VIEW IMPROVEMENTS

You can now Break a Section view in Onshape Drawings.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/hsyw00rnku

EDIT VIEW ORIENTATION IN ONSHAPE DRAWINGS

You can now edit the orientation of a drawing view after it has been inserted.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/yl28pqx20b

CUSTOMIZE USER DEFINED FEATURES IN TOOLBAR

You can now re-arrange custom features in the Part Studio toolbars.

NEW FEATURE/INSTANCE LIST STYLING

The feature list has been restyled to allow for resizing of contexts, configurations, features, and parts sections.  The feature list is now docked and is fully collapsable by clicking the feature list icon.

IMPORT IMPROVEMENTS

You can now choose the option to "Orient imported models with the Y Axis Up" when importing into multiple Documents. In the past, this option was limited to importing to a single Document.

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 and over the next few days these features will also be available in Documents created before the date of this update.

chadstoltzfus

One of my favorite updates yet! Composite parts will be huge for us, and will allow a much smoother workflow when managing our product metadata. 

Arcson

Super excited for composite parts. Does this feature propagate to legacy documents automatically or do we need to get support to update it for us? Good work Onshape team!

TimRice

Arcson said:

Super excited for composite parts. Does this feature propagate to legacy documents automatically or do we need to get support to update it for us? Good work Onshape team!

Older docs will be updated automatically in the coming days. 

Cache_River_Mill

These are very exciting, and much anticipated! Thank you Onshape team!

We Onshape!

Prachi

Nice round of updates. Especially composite part.

jonathan_monette

Composite part is a great improvement!!

S_Regula

Broken section views... Hallelujah!!

EvanReese

composite parts are going to be huge for us with weldments! nice!

john_mcclary

Holy crap! You all out-did yourselves this time!

I think everything you did this time was on my high hopes list, (with the exception of import y axis up multi-document)

Composite parts! That's pretty much setting a part as a SolidWorks multibody part. Which is awesome. Making converting my old multibody (single part) stuff from SW into a single instance. (example: swivel casters, which took me a half hour to import and configure for my common part libary)
No more move/face boolean union until it is one solid mass.

And the best part you failed to acknowledge.. Composite parts can be used in lieu of multi-colored faces
Too-bad it only works with "closed" unchecked

EricGauthier

I always like new update and this one is no exception!

But I'm not sure about composite parts, I'll have to try it a few days. I see advantages but I have a few interrogations:

1. The only benefit of using a composite part instead of an assembly for an imported bearing for example is that I don't have to create an assembly for the bearing. So no movement possible which is not a big deal for a bearing. Good point, the icon is different in the BOM in the assembly when inserted. Correct?
2. If I want to use a composite part for weldment, it means I have to model every parts (example a croner post) instead of creating an assembly for my weldment and reuse the same part? I'm not sure this solves the weldment assemblies functionnality I need in Onshape, my problem is actually when I want to weld parts together and then machine the weldment.
3. Can we configure composite parts? How does it behave?

Great job anyway!

Jake_Rosenfeld

@john_mcclary

Nice hack Assuming nothing crazy happens, you won't have to use it for too long

Hans_Ole_Leirvik

This time you surprised me!
Resizeable featurelist and Composite parts - very good 

Jake_Rosenfeld

@EricGauthier

Maybe I can shed some light on some of your questions:

1. Another advantage of a composite part is that it will update if you update the part in the Part Studio.  One disadvantage of using an assembly in the past was that if you have some sort of weldment with all of its individual parts inserted into an assembly, the assembly will not update if another part is added in the Part Studio. Now, if you make changes in the PS and make sure to include new parts in the composite part, those will come into the assembly automatically.
2. You are correct that in a case like you have pointed out, you would need to duplicate identical parts in the Part Studio.  Composite parts are not our ultimate solution to weldments,  we are still planning work towards having a full-featured weldments system.  Composite parts play into this system, but are just a small piece of a larger plan.
3. You can configure the composite part feature just like any other feature, but maybe this is not what you are curious about.  Is there a specific way you would like to configure this?

NeilCooke

@EricGauthier yes you can configure composite parts. 

3dcad

Composite parts makes me hungry for composite assemblies with motion enabled 

Great stuff and special thanks for not skipping update while we would have understood under all the internal hassle there must be with being acquired..  

josh_bitner

chad_stoltzfus said:

One of my favorite updates yet! Composite parts will be huge for us, and will allow a much smoother workflow when managing our product metadata. 

LET'S GO!

john_mcclary

Jake_Rosenfeld said:

@john_mcclary

Nice hack Assuming nothing crazy happens, you won't have to use it for too long

Uh oh, are you leaking info again

Ryan_Almeida

Nice improvements!  I've been creating my own "composite" parts with boolean features at the end of the tree.  Much cleaner now.  Thanks OnShape!

john_mcclary

Kind of sucks that the filter displays public documents too..

It would be nice if there was a filter button to only show documents Owned/Shared by me 

brucebartlett

Great Release, Thankyou! I wasn't even expecting composite parts but looking forward to using them and assuming they will do away with the extra group sub-assemblies I have come so use to using.  Excited to see how the change drawing veiw orientation will work, this could be a huge time saver and breaks in sections will also be handy. But as always I am already looking forward to the next release, which will hopefully see my 2 biggest wants atm, explodes and colored faces. 

MBartlett21

You forgot something:

The what's new notice on the documents page now has a present icon

The composite parts will be very useful

Michael_Coffee

The Composite parts improvement will make release management much more streamlined with vendor models coming in When using larger assemblies, we'd have to exclude the many parts that may be in it (ex: fans for moving material through an air stream), and this make things exceedingly easier for them. Along with that, the others will be greatly hopeful later on.

I do have one question. I posted at the end of the last improvement thread, so must have been missed (considering the PTC acquisition and all), but has there been any luck on the "Linked Documents Update" improvement that had to be nixed?

NeilCooke

john_mcclary said:

Kind of sucks that the filter displays public documents too..

It would be nice if there was a filter button to only show documents Owned/Shared by me 

You have to select My Onshape or Created by me first before using the advanced search.

john_mcclary

NeilCooke said:

john_mcclary said:

Kind of sucks that the filter displays public documents too..

It would be nice if there was a filter button to only show documents Owned/Shared by me 

You have to select My Onshape or Created by me first before using the advanced search.

Got it! Thanks

NeilCooke

Here's a simple example of an imported Caster with a configured Composite Part. Unchecking "closed" does keep all the constituent parts laying around, but at least the colors remain intact. A Composite Part filter on the Insert dialog would probably have been a good idea (IR anyone?)
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/0d96a0a44207338fe2049124/w/2938e513e59809f40e7e26cf/e/77f4efb6387ec8c5f2edb511

billy2

composite parts are just cool......

jakeramsley

Michael_Coffee said:

I do have one question. I posted at the end of the last improvement thread, so must have been missed (considering the PTC acquisition and all), but has there been any luck on the "Linked Documents Update" improvement that had to be nixed?

Hi Michael_Coffee,

For the re-re-release of the Linked Documents Update we are looking into rolling it out in a different manner than we have other features.  The functionality requires a potentially heavy background process that we had noticed causing unexpected issues and as such left the service in an unacceptable state for customers.  While we have made optimizations in this area, we are looking to roll out the functionality incrementally before announcing it as officially released.  This allows us to monitor the performance of the service along the way and adjust accordingly.

AlexD

To Onshape Team, 

"Composite parts" is GREAT!

And, it will save time as well as simplifying assemby and reduce sub-assembly configuration time

You can checked as "Completed" one of my improvement requests: https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/12016/multi-body-in-part-studio#latest

I guess that to be able to keep "appearance" (and "material") when "Closed" or have another option (Inseparable) for purchased composite part will make sure that nobody will select a single part while keeping the look.

THANKS again.

Song_Yikun

Song_Yikun

Composite parts looks will save my time of creating "sub-assembly", and it's good for BOM of the top assembly.
but it means I have to model every parts, this is not good when I also need a BOM for the sub-assembly which may can be assembled with many sames parts. every coin has 2 sides.

Looking forward to Crop a Section view in Onshape Drawings