Improvements to Onshape - November 12th, 2019

billyzelsnack

Glorious update!

gerhard_swanepoel

Great improvements! Especially composite parts and view orientation.

GuidoNADEC

Composite parts and view orientation. Really nice. Thanks

andrew_southen

I'm just an absolute beginner, not sure if this is the correct place to ask the question, if it's not, feel free to point me in the right direction as to where the correct place to ask would be. Anyway, looking at the first video on composite parts, what would be the best way to draw up weldments such as the base, constructed of SHS, RHS & pipe sections in Onshape? What are the advantages/disadvantages to using the Beams feature script, as opposed to creating all the individual parts. Which it looks like has been done in the composite part video. Am I wrong in my assumptions that the example was created that way? 

I'm just trying to figure out best practice as to how to go about creating such drawings. Just a brief explanation of a logical process would be great. For something like a flat deck truck tray for example. No moving parts, compound curves or anything like that. Draw it all in a single part studio? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Cheers

NeilCooke

andrew_southen said:

I'm just an absolute beginner, not sure if this is the correct place to ask the question, if it's not, feel free to point me in the right direction as to where the correct place to ask would be. Anyway, looking at the first video on composite parts, what would be the best way to draw up weldments such as the base, constructed of SHS, RHS & pipe sections in Onshape? What are the advantages/disadvantages to using the Beams feature script, as opposed to creating all the individual parts. Which it looks like has been done in the composite part video. Am I wrong in my assumptions that the example was created that way? 

I'm just trying to figure out best practice as to how to go about creating such drawings. Just a brief explanation of a logical process would be great. For something like a flat deck truck tray for example. No moving parts, compound curves or anything like that. Draw it all in a single part studio? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Cheers

The fastest and easiest way would be to use the Beams feature which will take care of all the profiles and trimming/intersections for you. There's no requirement to use Composite Parts unless you want to insert the entire weldment into an assembly as one part. One Part Studio, one or more sketches, several Beam features should do it. If you get stuck, just post in the Community Support category.

andrew_southen

NeilCooke said:

andrew_southen said:

I'm just an absolute beginner, not sure if this is the correct place to ask the question, if it's not, feel free to point me in the right direction as to where the correct place to ask would be. Anyway, looking at the first video on composite parts, what would be the best way to draw up weldments such as the base, constructed of SHS, RHS & pipe sections in Onshape? What are the advantages/disadvantages to using the Beams feature script, as opposed to creating all the individual parts. Which it looks like has been done in the composite part video. Am I wrong in my assumptions that the example was created that way? 

I'm just trying to figure out best practice as to how to go about creating such drawings. Just a brief explanation of a logical process would be great. For something like a flat deck truck tray for example. No moving parts, compound curves or anything like that. Draw it all in a single part studio? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Cheers

The fastest and easiest way would be to use the Beams feature which will take care of all the profiles and trimming/intersections for you. There's no requirement to use Composite Parts unless you want to insert the entire weldment into an assembly as one part. One Part Studio, one or more sketches, several Beam features should do it. If you get stuck, just post in the Community Support category.

Excellent. Thank you very much for the reply. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't heading completely off in the wrong direction. Any further questions/problems or issues I run into, I'll head over to the community support area. Cheers 

john_mcclary

Just in time for broken section views.. I had to grow the side wall by 6" this morning.

Which made section A-A and B-B overlap. Just saved me from having to add another sheet to the drawing package.

That's one more tree left standing in the rain forest

owen_sparks

Wowzers.  I'm happy if one improvement is appropriate to our use cases but this time it's impossible to single out just one improvement, they're all going to be great.  Thanks devs!

philip_thomas

In addition to all the cool reasons described in this thread to use Composite parts, there was another driver. 
A composite part can be included in a Release Candidate. By allowing that, it now becomes possible to:

• Revision manage surfaces, curves and meshes - things you couldn't Rev manage before.
• PUT MESHES INTO AN ASSEMBLY!

EDIT - I am being told that it's a bug that you can put a mesh into an Assembly! Do not expect this to last for long - sorry (I am sure that it will be back soon ).

don_williams909

LOVE the Composite Part.  I am very frequently importing speaker drivers from vendors, and this will save me hours of work in creating assemblies of the parts.

That said....  Isn't this just an Assembly with a different name?  A rose is still a rose...

Does creating a composite part automatically create part relations / mates?

If you create a composite part, and choose the "Closed" option, what happens to the assigned material densities of the individual parts?
If those densities disappear, how do we then find the CoG of the "Composite Part".

Every single part I use has to have a material assigned, so that I can calculate the CoG of the full assembly.  If those go by the way side... I'm toast.

nbennett

Great update, the composite parts surprised me actually but this a highly appreciated addition! This will be put to use immediately and save us a lot of time and headache when dealing with imported purchased parts among other things. Really appreciated!

I'm just curious how performance compares with the alternative of either booleaning our way to a single part or dumping everything into an assembly? Seems like a lot of data gets dragged along to the top level when using these two options (though I really can't be sure what exactly is happening behind the scenes), which appears to stack up and slow down large assemblies. Can we expect to see gains in this area when utilizing composite parts, and would you suggest exporting and re-importing a composite part as a further step if we are experiencing performance issues? Thanks again

PeteYodis

Song_Yikun said:

@Song_Yikun Here is the what's new post for that one: 
 

Improvements to Onshape - October 17th, 2019 — Onshape

NeilCooke

don_williams909 said:

LOVE the Composite Part.  I am very frequently importing speaker drivers from vendors, and this will save me hours of work in creating assemblies of the parts.

That said....  Isn't this just an Assembly with a different name?  A rose is still a rose...

Does creating a composite part automatically create part relations / mates?

If you create a composite part, and choose the "Closed" option, what happens to the assigned material densities of the individual parts?
If those densities disappear, how do we then find the CoG of the "Composite Part".

Every single part I use has to have a material assigned, so that I can calculate the CoG of the full assembly.  If those go by the way side... I'm toast.

It is similar to an assembly with parts all grouped. If you use "closed" it is all one material (that you must assign), if you use "open" then it will inherit the material properties of all its constituent parts.

Henk_de_Vlaam

NeilCooke said:

[...] 

If you create a composite part, and choose the "Closed" option, what happens to the assigned material densities of the individual parts?
If those densities disappear, how do we then find the CoG of the "Composite Part".

Every single part I use has to have a material assigned, so that I can calculate the CoG of the full assembly.  If those go by the way side... I'm toast.

It is similar to an assembly with parts all grouped. If you use "closed" it is all one material (that you must assign), if you use "open" then it will inherit the material properties of all its constituent parts.

@NeilCooke, this is great.

I assigned material and a colour to separate parts and composized them while keeping the Close option unchecked. Now the composized parts had different colours and I changed the appearance of the composite part to one colour. That worked, however, after a while I liked to delete the appearance of the comp. part and gave the separate parts there own colour. How do I that? 
  

ilya_baran

@Henk_de_V If the composite is open, you can just assign a color to a constituent.  Assigning the color to an open composite is equivalent to assigning a color to every constituent.

NeilCooke

Henk_de_V said:

NeilCooke said:

[...] 

If you create a composite part, and choose the "Closed" option, what happens to the assigned material densities of the individual parts?
If those densities disappear, how do we then find the CoG of the "Composite Part".

Every single part I use has to have a material assigned, so that I can calculate the CoG of the full assembly.  If those go by the way side... I'm toast.

It is similar to an assembly with parts all grouped. If you use "closed" it is all one material (that you must assign), if you use "open" then it will inherit the material properties of all its constituent parts.

@NeilCooke, this is great.

I assigned material and a colour to separate parts and composized them while keeping the Close option unchecked. Now the composized parts had different colours and I changed the appearance of the composite part to one colour. That worked, however, after a while I liked to delete the appearance of the comp. part and gave the separate parts there own colour. How do I that? 
  

Once you assign a metrial or appearance to a "composized" part (I like that  ) it overrides everything else and cannot be undone (apart from using the document history). The only other way is to delete and recreate the composite part but if you've used it elsewhere (assembly) it will have a different ID and hence will be broken. As @ilya_baran says, you can set the colors manually if you can remember what they were.

Henk_de_Vlaam

@NeilCooke, composized part was a kind of Henk_d_V-'dutch' translation for constituent.   
But it's clear now: refresh the colors of the 'composized' parts.

3dcad

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.

It should be default to concentrate on 'local' documents and only require extra click if you wan't to see also public documents. 

brucebartlett

3dcad said:

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.

It should be default to concentrate on 'local' documents and only require extra click if you wan't to see also public documents. 

Yes, I can't remember where exactly it happens but often have to change the filter from public doc's.  The result I want is always to show my documents as default, if I was searching for something public, which is virtually never, I would be happy to change to that filter not have come up as default. 

tim_hess427

@brucebartlett , @3dcad - I agree! I think it happens when trying to "insert" one thing into another and you search through "Other Documents".  For example, when adding a part to an assembly, or replacing a part on a drawing. 

I didn't see an improvement request for this, so I created one here: https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/12608/change-search-default-to-private-documents-for-paid-accounts-when-searching-other-documents/p1?new=1

owen_sparks

@tim_hess427 Vote cast

Owen S.

owen_sparks

Hi.

Anyone else having problems with "CUSTOMIZE USER DEFINED FEATURES IN TOOLBAR"?  I can modify all the standard feature icon locations just fine but am unable to drag any FS icons. (Old or brand new docs.)

***Edit - I was doing it wrong, see Neil's method below.

Cheers, Owen S.

NeilCooke

owen_sparks said:

Hi.

Anyone else having problems with "CUSTOMIZE USER DEFINED FEATURES IN TOOLBAR"?  I can modify all the standard feature icon locations just fine but am unable to drag any FS icons. (Old or brand new docs.)

Cheers, Owen S.

OK, so this can be a little tricky depending upon your set up:

1. If you have a widescreen monitor, so that the icons move out of the icon drop-down, then you can move them individually.
2. If all your icons are in the drop-down (because you have so many), remove the entire group then add them back one by one

bruce_williams

@NeilCooke
Thanks for demonstrating that - I did not get it either.  Nice to be able to make groups and set them in order.   

Is it possible to force a group to be a 'pull down'?  The group becomes a pull down if graphics squeezes them but would be nice to have big screen graphics and simplify the menu bar.   Then naming the group will be IR icing.

NeilCooke

bruce_williams said:

@NeilCooke
Thanks for demonstrating that - I did not get it either.  Nice to be able to make groups and set them in order.   

Is it possible to force a group to be a 'pull down'?  The group becomes a pull down if graphics squeezes them but would be nice to have big screen graphics and simplify the menu bar.   Then naming the group will be IR icing.

I already put in my own internal request to be able to do that, but a customer-driven IR will add more weight...

owen_sparks

Hi Neil.  Gotcha, thanks, appreciate the tutorial.

My layout was a bit of both, all the standard icons fit without drop-downs but the 50-odd FS icons were in a group.   After "unpacking" the FS group as you describe all worked as expected.

A couple of observations:-

(a) Adding them all back one a time was a bit tedious, but a fair price to pay for customization.  That said it'd be nice one day to be able to drag everything after a "Control-A" in one hit.

(b) The drop down was only created after saving the changes, whilst editing the icons were side by side, so I ran out of screen width before adding them all back in. It still worked, they could be added, they just fell off the side.

Tiny niggles, and I love having my own FS menus now.

Thanks again.

Owen S.

NeilCooke

@owen_sparks - changing the zoom level of your browser to 25% is another little trick you can use

bruce_williams

@owen_sparks good points.  Sure makes FS easier to find though!

here is the IR on "Menu groups - pull down, name, and icon"  Please add your votes!

owen_sparks

bruce_williams said:

@NeilCooke
Thanks for demonstrating that - I did not get it either.  Nice to be able to make groups and set them in order.   

Is it possible to force a group to be a 'pull down'?  The group becomes a pull down if graphics squeezes them but would be nice to have big screen graphics and simplify the menu bar.   Then naming the group will be IR icing.

I'd vote for that.  Being able to decide which menus become drop-down first would be great

O.S.

owen_sparks

Thanks @bruce_williams, vote cast.  Methinks your hyperlink is borked though

OS