Our company has used Solidworks for as long as I can remember. We receive Gigabyte big step model files from our customers from which we design our specialised tooling around their model. I have been trying to do things with ONSHAPE that I would do with Solidworks and it just seems so difficult. Even the basic importation of large step files is not satisfactory with the graphics starting to degenerate circles into polygons. Maybe in ten years time ONSHAPE might be a credible alternative for 'real' work, but for now I think it is a brave attempt with real promise, but still a long way to go. I expect a lot people to disagree with me, but I would love to hear someone say that they have worked with assemblies with 500+ components in ONSHAPE and find it a true alternative from traditional CAD.

@dr_hutchinson I think you are right, currently Onshape is not a real alternative for even mid-size designs. It good for testing and for small projects - performance and tool set is not enough for serious cad work. Few reasons to back up my opinion: - Onshape renders whole model, even if you are zoomed to see only 1% of model - this causes performance issues - Model loading is too slow - Document list loading is too slow - Lack of parametric dimension, configurations, cross document references and other basic features of a modern cad - Drawings should be there soon, but the first stab will not be enough for 'moving in' But there are so many good things going on that I truly believe that Onshape team can make these things go away. As I have mentioned earlier, they could have done development on their own for few years, but I'm really happy they came out sooner and let us comment and request things we need in our future cad.

You make a fair and powerful point, I reckon. The merits of Onshape are currently considerable, but it's effectively a 'working model' of a new way of working, a tantalising and incredibly promising sketch, still in beta and fast-evolving, but with a long long way to go. I don't know enough about the challenges of taking the idea to scale, but the main reason I see your concerns as valid is not because I have any doubts about the talent, but because I just don't know if an "off the shelf" browser can ever provide a suitably supportive ecosystem. Frankly I think it's debatable whether even Solidworks is an adequate performer on really large complex assemblies. and in that case, maybe it is coming up against limits in the architecture of the Windows ecosystem. It's not within my area of expertise. What follows is rank speculation on my part: My uninformed hope is that, if "taking it to scale" leads Onshape's performance to degrade for those who need to work at the top end, that they would eventually provide (at a fair cost) a dedicated browser substitute on the most suitable OS/hardware combo of the day, optimised for the particular needs of Onshape. Naturally, for commercial viability, they would have to continue to ensure that continued to, for more moderate users, the app run perfectly well on a range of 'off the shelf' browsers and OS/hardware

I'll agree on the not ready at the moment part. I will disagree on the 10 yr comment. In 10 years I think Cloud CAD will be completely destroying the performance of desktop CAD, and will have been doing it for quite a while. Keep in mind you are comparing a product that is still in Beta and has only been in development a short time to a product that has a 20+year time span with many, many, many more development hours in it.

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Is ONSHAPE a true replacement for traditional CAD?

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AuroraRon Member Posts: 126 PRO

May 3

I have contacted support over the years, and they do give suggestions, but the problems remain.

Onshape needs to work on making it easier for people to import more than a simple part from other platforms, or it will never be able to replace the competition.

It is embarrassing to tell Fortune 500 companies that we are using Onshape, and it can't open their files without errors or total failure.

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Is ONSHAPE a true replacement for traditional CAD?

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