Exporting and Importing Files to Local Harddrive

peter_hall

When exporting Onshape work there appears to be the following formats:
Assemblies - Parasolid , Step , STL
Parts           - Parasolid , Acis , Step , Iges , Solidworks , STL

So if I want to export to my computer and then reimport to Onshape at a later date to work on the files again , which is the best formats to use from Onshape point of view? Which interprets best on reload?

The question is born from the discussion regarding the new 100MB limit on private documents for the free subscription , as this seems to be an answer for the hobbyist who does not want to make work public.

andrew_troup

Onshape's solid modelling kernel is said to be parasolid based, so (at least in theory) that should work best for export and import.

You will of course not be able to access or edit features or mates created prior to export, as it will be in the form of 'dumb solids'. You will be restricted to the direct editing operations, like Move Face, resize Fillets, add Draft (these are already quite powerful in Onshape, and can be expected to become more so) or building further features on top of (or subtracting from) the imported body.

Narayan_K

You can export to Parasolid or step,both formats can be translated to Onshape part studio.But presently STL file can not be translated to Onshape.
I think translation of STL to onshape will help us more.If we go for 3d scanning like CMM then we can get STL output in cheaper rate than STEP,IGES or parasolid.At this stage STL translation in Onshape will help us more....
Hope this will include in next updates...

3dcad

I hope we would see native Onshape files export/import (hopefully only one click / document) - this would solve the private limit issue and give a good night sleep for people who think their harddrive is better place than cloud.

peter_hall

@3dcad  that would be good , totally agree on all counts. If I am working with customers parts designing welding fixtures then I will be importing step files of their parts to build a fixture around. I would be unable to save these to a public model. At the moment whilst I am practising/learning then all my efforts are shared with public to ensure there is little or no data usage on private models. I want to continue with free use status until a customer project drives me to the pro account. In this way it is a paid for account with me earning money.

kevin_quigley

@3dcad yes. exactly. Even if it was an encrypted format that could only be opened in Onshape. Better still, if it was an encrypted format only openable in Onshape but could be hosted on another cloud provider like Dropbox, Box, etc and then sharable directly from there, all the better.

shashank_aarya

I would like to see this similar to office-365 from Microsoft. They also have provided the limit of cloud storage at Onedrive to the users based on free or paid subscription. But data can be saved in cloud as well as on your local hard drive. Users can also edit the documents online.