Improvements to Onshape - January 7th, 2020

cody_armstrong

It's 2020, and we are starting early with an update that will help you improve productivity in the new year! This update focuses on a number of user-requested usability and drawing improvements. Let's dig in.

CAD IMPROVEMENTS

MEASURE TOOL IN ONSHAPE DRAWINGS

You can now measure in Onshape Drawings.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/0p06yu6syp

MIN/MAX DIMENSION IN ONSHAPE DRAWINGS

You will find a new Min/Max Dimension type in Onshape Drawings. This new dimension makes it easier to dimension to the inside or outside of arcs or circles.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/npndmcy9z0

GD&T EDGE EXTENSIONS

You can now create GD&T symbols that reference an edge with an edge extension as opposed to a leader with arrow.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/9rig0k5nds

MICROSOFT ONEDRIVE INTEGRATION

You can now integrate Microsoft OneDrive with your Onshape account.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/egd3eqsg2v

COMPOSITE PARTS FILTER IN ONSHAPE ASSEMBLIES

You can now filter by Composite parts when inserting into Onshape Assemblies. This was highly-requested by users after announcing this new feature a few months ago.

EXPORT IMPROVEMENTS

Those with export permissions can now export Linked Documents from the right-click context menu of an assembly. In the past you had to open the Linked Document and export from it.

PROFESSIONAL IMPROVEMENTS

EXPORT FROM RELEASE CANDIDATE DIALOG

You can now export directly from the Release candidate dialog in Onshape. This is especially useful for those that need to export released data as you no longer need to load the release and browse through the Document to export.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/o6tzcqu12e

LEARNING CENTER IMPROVEMENTS

A new course, Understanding Curves, has been added to the Onshape Learning Center to explain how to create the underlying framework for advanced part creation and surface models. This course is available to Standard, Professional, Enterprise, and Educational subscriptions.

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.

HuguesLessardWRI

Nice work! Drawing improvements are always welcome.

emagdalenaC2i

Sure, drawings improvements are very welcome

john_mcclary

Cool beans

Glad to see you are still improving drawings

Effendi_H

Nice work developer team.

romeograham

Wow - the export from Release dialog is a HUGE time-saver.
Thank you thank you thank you thank you!

fnxf_scewo

I really, really like that we're now able to export from the Release dialogue. Thank you!

Of course, one month earlier would've really saved a lot of clicks...

Do you think we could also have a "Export complete Release" button to download all PDFs & 3D-files with one easy click?

EvanReese

Thanks, team! Export improvements are where it's at for me.

This export update seems like a first step to something more automated. I have a feeling that these things are already on the dev team's mind, and probably a lot more, but here goes anyway. I'd like to see a single click to export all released items as @fnxf_scewo suggests. We should also be able to automate and customize the naming of things there to add dates, revs, versions, custom project codes, and also to remove things like the part studio name. It would also be good to export several file types of the same item, like a .step, x_t, and .stl all at once. I sometimes send all 3 to China at once so I don't have to lose a day when they ask for the one I didn't send.

Thanks for the constant improvements. Update day is always exciting.

owen_sparks

Nice!!

Will it be possible today/later to filter a featurescript instantiator for composite parts only?

Cheers, Owen S.

Konstantin_Sh

From one point it's a big improvement to have one place for export each part, from the other hand you made it dependent from release process. From what I heard on the forum releasing is not as flawless so we avoid using it for now, and it means that though you now can say that you have this feature, it may be actually mostly unusable just like assembly items.

jakeramsley

owen_sparks said:

Nice!!

Will it be possible today/later to filter a featurescript instantiator for composite parts only?

Cheers, Owen S.

Unless I am misunderstanding, I believe this is possible:

https://cad.onshape.com/FsDoc/library.html#newInstantiator-Id-map
When you are creating your instantiator, you pass it a query that filters down to the composite parts only using a query like:

https://cad.onshape.com/FsDoc/library.html#BodyType

qBodyType(query, BodyType.COMPOSITE)

ex.

newInstantiator(id, {
            "partQuery": qBodyType(query, BodyType.COMPOSITE)
        });

owen_sparks

Thanks @jakeramsley that's exactly what I'm after. Sorry for not reading the manual properly and seeing composite was already a body type.
Will take it for a test-drive in the morning.
Cheers, Owen.

daveaseeman

I second what @Evan_Reese and @fnxf_scewo are saying - ability to download all parts & assemblies as 1 file type, all drawings as 1 filetype, and to control the naming of those files with meta data to get something like {{part number}} {{part name}}.step (etc) would be amazing.

john_mcclary

+100

Edit:   make that +300 just for this release package alone...

東_鈺

I want to input Chinese directly on the drawing

brucebartlett

Great to see another set of updates. The best thing ever is not having to worry about upgrades and just logging in for a new version.  It's great to see further improvements to drawings, they are a real joy use now and all these small improvements are the icing on the cake.  I am also liking the larger button in the insert which I think has only just turned up.  Also, I am now making use of the interference tool from a previous recent release, this is very handy and just saved me from a few drawing errors. 

Great to see some important improvements around release and exports but would be nice to have a bulk export button, for me, export for drawings in pdf's and dxf files from a release in one go would be a huge time saver.  Please, please keep working in this area as it's currently a real productivity killer at the highest-pressure point of projects. 

brucebartlett

john_mcclary said:

+100

Edit:   make that +300 just for this release package alone...

Yes Please! Print or export 300 approved drawings in one click from the product structure, as opposed to days spent navigating and printing/exporting 1 by 1.

john_mcclary

I was referring the the unique part step files that need to be exported for mfg.
But yes, bulk export of anything is a high priority

brucebartlett

@john_mcclary I totally missed the context, I just saw the photo of the pile of drawings and thinking of the pain you have to go through to print them all. That is unless you use multi-sheet of which I don't. 

john_mcclary

I do use multi sheet, mostly because of the export limitations.

Otherwise I'd likely use multi-tab again just so I could do detailing cheats where you duplicate a sheet and replace reference.

bruce_williams

mmm.  not pinned.  Holding breath....

john_mcclary

Yea, noticed it last night before bed... been checking in all morning... Not sure why they are un-pinning so early now. 

owen_sparks

To mess with you of course!

john_mcclary

Mission Accomplished

john_mcclary

Lolz

adrian_vlzkz

brucebartlett

Hopefully unpinned to make way for exploded views  . That would make me happy. 

tim_hess427

But I just started using the assembly configurations + configured mates to do exploded views yesterday!

brucebartlett

tim_hess427 said:

But I just started using the assembly configurations + configured mates to do exploded views yesterday!

I am holding off doing that in a project hoping it might be in the next release. If not, that's what I'll have to do.