Creating a drawing from multiple parts

brett_sutton

The onshape drawing basic page states:

• To create a drawing of all parts in a Part Studio, use the tab context menu (right click on the tab).

I assume that when its states 'tab', its means the main tab at the bottom of the page.

When I right clicked on the part studio tab there is no option to create a drawing.

Essentially I'm looking to place a large no of parts in a drawing that each need to be dimensioned. Inserting one part at a time is a nightmare of tedium.

NeilCooke

That option was removed to prevent this bad practice and the help needs updating. 

You should really use an assembly rather than making a drawing of the Part Studio but if you really need to do this, there is a filter button on the drawing view insert dialog to show Part Studios. 

brett_sutton

@NeilCooke

late response but I've been playing with the 'create drawing from assembly' and I have to say its still a very sub-optimal process.

I'm using onshape to design cabinets/windows and similar. A small piece has twenty parts, a large piece has 150 parts.

When I go to layout the drawings I need to show all three dimensions for each part as well as multiple views for some parts.

Dropping in an assembly blob does not  allow this so I end up having to still manually insert each a part into a drawing.

Even if you ignore the three dimension issue, using an assembly to explode the parts is also a problem.
You have to keep moving backward and forward between the assembly and the drawing to ensure you have enough space between each part to apply the dimension labels.

I've just done a count and it takes 6 clicks and 25 seconds to insert a part (the part studio is in a folder). I have a rather grunty machine with a mid-to-high end graphics card that is 6 months old. I am on linux. (I'm a software developer so I think it's reasonable to say that I'm fairly proficient with a mouse).

This whole process is really horrible.

What I really want is for a drawing to allow me to insert multiple parts into the drawing in the same way that I can in an assembly.

I would also be really useful if the bom showed dimensions as I'm currently having to go though and use custom fields to fill out the bom dimensions.

I know I'm a free loading hobbist, but I can't be the only one suffering from this and it feels like a really simple change that would make a huge difference.

jones

I have the exact same problem.
I am a designer and I use OnShape for drawing and planning furniture. My parts are mostly pretty simple rectangular boards–maybe sometimes with a few notches or holes. I also don't need every view (top-view, front and side) because a board just has a thickness and I am interested in showing the length and the height within the drawing.

See my two images what a standard process for me looks like:
1. my parts
2. a drawing I usually end up putting together manually (and this is only a third or so)

So what I would wish for:
- Selecting multiple parts at once to show them in the drawing (if all 3 views would be showed, I would not care)
- Automated labeling of the dimensions, because the labeling is very tedious.
- Option to automatically add the parts name to the drawing. I normally label my parts quite consistently, so that would be great to have the name appearing next to the 2d-drawing.

I also know that I am, like @brett_sutton a free user, but I also believe that this could be a huge improvement!

chadstoltzfus

Something I would recommend doing if you want to create drawings from Part Studios is to create a composite part of all parts in the part studio (this could be automated with a custom feature) and then in the parts list (below the feature tree) right click on the composite part and select "Creating drawing of ______."