Onshape releases

rune_thorsen229

Hi, just coming back in office after the covid lockdown to discover that Onshape no longer is useful on my PC. Worked fine before, then 4 months later there seem to be problems with WebGL. You'll probably respond that I should update hardware etc. Same thing happened when I started using onshape on Android 6 - suddenly one day the app needed to be upgraded and was incompatible with the OS. 
Is it only me thinking that this is a serious problem when one plans for designing to find you need to buy new hardware because Onshape is a new release?
In the old times before SAAS we just re-installed the old program and you were up and running. 
I would propose that Onshape let the user select between 1 continuing working with the same release or 2 using the current release.

alnis

@rune_thorsen229 could you please give us the results of https://cad.onshape.com/check?

If it's worked once, it should be able to work again on a desktop machine. Androids are a little different since new APIs become available in new OS releases, which can increase performance/allow the implementation of new capabilities (meaning apps need to increase their minimum android version). Unfortunately, manufacturers often don't backport new Android releases to older devices. On the other hand, desktop operating systems and browsers are backported to older devices. The latest Onshape version worked fine on my 7-year-old laptop, and I'm now starting up a 10-year-old machine I have lying around to see whether it works on that.

Edit: the latest release works on this machine with a processor released 2010 Q1 with integrated graphics:

lougallo

@rune_thorsen229 it is most likely your browser is way out of date from not being able to update.  We only run one version not multiple. That is what plagues desktop software as well.

billy2

@rune_thorsen229 webgl is a cloud standard that's almost ubiquitous; "almost". It's impressive that it encompasses phones, tablets & computers. It's the first time in computing history that something's been this far reaching.

It's a webgl problem, try updating browser or whatever your using. Just be aware there are a lot of people trying to make this work. Look up the kronos group and what they're trying to do. They're serious about this.

Please don't compare this to the old crappy desktop days, those days were horrible. 

Sorry you're having issues.

rune_thorsen229

alnis_smidchenslougallo and @billy2
The take home message, which Ill pass on to my students, is that you cannot be 100% sure that OS will work the day of your final thesis presentation, because some update (whatever its OS,WebGL, Chrome...) will knock you out.

tim_hess427

Sure... while you can't be 100% sure, I've never had a problem when keeping my OS and browser updated. I also keep a couple different browsers, (Chrome, firefox, edge handy as backups). 

ilya_baran

@rune_thorsen229 That's correct.  Just like you can't be 100% sure that your power supply or video card or drive won't fail, or an operating system update prevent you from using your machine and maybe leave you with a data recovery problem.  I've had all of those happen to me at some point in time.

alnis

@rune_thorsen229 Any software or hardware can fail.

The difference with Onshape is that if something somehow breaks on your machine's end, you can hop onto a different computer and start presenting there in half a minute, and there's never data loss.

In the case of Inventor, Solidworks, and other offline/file-based CAD packages, if your files corrupt, your computer fries itself, an automatic update breaks your CAD package, or any other issue happens, you're outta luck and will have to present another day (assuming you were running a good backup scheme for your project and can recover the files). Not to mention, ransomware and other computer viruses can completely knock out a whole company's engineering data, backups included, if they aren't careful with their data.

I've seen Solidworks and Inventor fail catastrophically during presentations, but have not seen Onshape do so. Yes, it can fail, but it does so much less frequently and in a much more recoverable way.

Plus, if you're worried about an operating system upgrade breaking your computer, you can use Ubuntu LTS with Onshape for a consistent, reliable experience for years at a time with full control over updates/upgrades. On the other hand, with Inventor, Solidworks, and others, you are subjected to the whims of automatic Windows updates.