Improvements to Onshape - March 29th, 2021

paul_simon

Spring is finally here! With its warmer weather, its singing birds AND of course a number or great Onshape improvements! We are excited to bring you our second release this month. This release brings big improvements to variables and more. Let’s take a look!

CAD IMPROVEMENTS

VARIABLE TABLE

Variables can now be viewed, created or edited in a new panel on the right-hand side of the screen in a Part Studio. This new variable table makes it much easier to find and edit variables, especially when multiple variables are scattered throughout your Feature list.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/6tyalu87qp?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=640

DRAWING IMPROVEMENTS

EXPORT IMAGES

Drawing sheets can now be exported as SVG, JPEG or PNG image formats.

SECTION AND DETAIL VIEW IDENTIFIERS 

Currently the drawings sheet panel only shows “Section” and “Detail” for those types of views. In this release, the drawing sheet panel has been Improved to reveal Section and Detail view identifiers like “Section A-A” or “Detail B”. 

EXPORT SELECTED DRAWING SHEETS

Until now, for DWG and DXF formats, you only had two choices when exporting a drawing: export all sheets or export the current sheet. Now you can also specify which sheet you want to export. Use the “Custom sheets” option and specify the range of sheets you would like to export. This is very similar to how you would select pages for a printer.

MOBILE IMPROVEMENTS

IOS - MASS PROPERTIES OVERRIDE

With this release, we have added the functionality to override mass properties. Sometimes users will want to give a part a prescribed mass since the density is not easily calculated. This prevents the user from having to back calculate a density to give the part the mass they want.

IOS - HIDE ALL MATES/HIDE OTHER MATES

With this release, we have added the functionality to hide all mates or hide other mates. This gives you more flexibility when working in the assembly environment. 

GENERAL IMPROVEMENTS

EDUCATION ACCOUNT EXPIRY NOTIFICATIONS

Education Standard users will now receive a notification to renew their account at least one week before their account expires to ensure continuity. If the account is not renewed, it will be downgraded to the Onshape Free plan. 

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS

In addition to adding great new features every 3 weeks, improving performance is a top priority here at Onshape. With this update, we have improved assembly opening time and reduced client side memory usage – in other words, less data is needed so your assemblies will open faster.

ENTERPRISE IMPROVEMENT

INTEGRATING WITH PingOne

With this release, we have new instructions showing users how to integrate Onshape’s Enterprise with PingOne.

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 Onshape Documents and over the next few days these features will also be available in Documents created before the date of this update.

bruce_williams

Variable tables, nice!  And great drawing improvements.   Thank you Onshape team!

lemon1324

If I use the "new variable name" row in the variable table, does that newly created variable go at the top or bottom of the feature tree?

_anton

lemon1324 said:

If I use the "new variable name" row in the variable table, does that newly created variable go at the top or bottom of the feature tree?

If you're editing a feature, it'll go above the feature. Else, it'll go right before the rollback bar.

Jake_Rosenfeld

@lemon1324

New variables created in the table are inserted into the feature list right before the current position of the rollback bar.

Listen to Anton!  He wrote it  

王振翊

效能的改進
非常有感覺
讚!

marc_crompton

Exporting Drawings to SVG?  YES!!!!!!!  Looking forward to playing with this.  Should make my laser cutter workflow so much easier!

jacques_spillmann

SVG! I've been waiting for that a long time! Thank you. Now if I had "Perspective On" option on drawings that will make it perfect!

Ivan_Deetlefs

I hope bulk export is coming in the near future. Currently, every drawing/part has to be exported individually. This is a bit of a problem if you have around 70 parts.

shawn_crocker

That variable table looks very useful.  Can't wait for assembly variables and feature script in the assembly environment.  Also hoping for BOM in the mobile environment soon.

martijn_elserman

SVG export is very welcome for my lasercut workflow! If SVG could be added to the PartStudio view also, beside the current DXF/DWG option, it would make the Onshape to lasercutter workflow so much easier and faster.

MichaelPascoe

Whew, legit update. Thank you Onshape team!

john_mcclary

Variable pane looks good. Nice idea

Assemblies do appear to load much faster now.

I still see issues with assemblies/configurations
every day I have to go through each config of some assemblies otherwise they fail to display.
here is an example of it happening and what I do to fix it.

(note, the part is not disappearing after loading, that was just where I ended the video and it looped back to the beginning. it seems to be on every user until one person goes through and clicks through the configs to render the assembly, at that point everyone can see the parts even on fresh login for the day)

Has anyone else seen this? I've seen it in a bunch of documents to date

sean_blanchard

Variable Tables are everything! Awesome improvements. 

Jolly

Way to go with performance improvements! I imagine every gain is an absolute ton of work. But I really appreciate it.

pmd

I am very pleased about the drawing export to SVG, lot of good opportunities to remove PDFs from our workflow in the future.

I would be even more pleased if the SVG export did not have the "width" and "height" attributes set, just the viewbox so it auto-scaled.

tim_hess427

@john_mcclary - I haven't seen that with configured sub-assemblies, but just today I ran into a similar issue with configured parts not showing up in my configured assembly. 

I tried reloading a few configurations in the part studio and now I'm getting more stuff to show up in my assembly, but there's still a couple that aren't coming through, I think. 

Update: I just found one configuration that wasn't showing up in my assembly. I reloaded that configuration in the part studio, then refreshed the assembly tab and the part showed up. 

Jolly

pmd said:

I am very pleased about the drawing export to SVG, lot of good opportunities to remove PDFs from our workflow in the future.

I would be even more pleased if the SVG export did not have the "width" and "height" attributes set, just the viewbox so it auto-scaled.

Is replacing PDFs with SVGs a thing? What's the benefit? Curious if I gotta get on the bandwagon. ;-)

janos_horvath

Thanks Onshape, great update!
It is not the first time that I miss a function and the next update fixes it.
Today in the morning I tried to overwrite the mass of one part in the app and saw it is not possible. In the evening it can be done, mind blowing!

tim_hess427

@Jolls - I assumed they were talking about exporting the SVGs for laser cutters, engravers, or something similar. But now you got me thinking about where else they might be useful... 

archiving? analysis? importing to some other system? 

Arunabha_Nag

@john_mcclary , @tim_hess427

If you experience the issue again, can you please create a support ticket ? 

fnxf

Section and Detail View Identifiers! Nice! 

pmd

@jolls my use case of removing PDFs is a bit niche. We use raspberry pi based 'kiosk' touchscreen terminals in the workshop for data display/entry  via an in-house web application. Making this work well and fast with PDFs is a pain so do not bother. Having the data as SVG means it just becomes another element on the web page with no other apps needed.

Jolly

pmd said:

@jolls my use case of removing PDFs is a bit niche. We use raspberry pi based 'kiosk' touchscreen terminals in the workshop for data display/entry  via an in-house web application. Making this work well and fast with PDFs is a pain so do not bother. Having the data as SVG means it just becomes another element on the web page with no other apps needed.

That's interesting. So someone wrote an inhouse app that interfaces with Onshape API? Very cool!

tim_hess427

@Arunabha_Nag - Yep! I created a ticket yesterday. I think it's closed now because I was able to get things working by manually regenerating the configurations like John did. I'll create another one if I see it again. 

Eric_Wong

Great update, happy to see that work is still being done to improve on performance. Love the variable table being added. The ability to filter features to those driven by variables is so close to what I actually want, which is the ability to actually to see if a dimension is driven by a dim/eqn without having to click into it (which along with assembly folders is one of the very few things I miss from SW) 

zachary3352

The variable table looks awesome! Great way to manage lots of variables at once. Thanks, Onshape team!

john_allen289

Great updates as always Onshape, drawing improvements always welcome.

Gavin_Munro

The variable table and exporting selected sheets is great. It would be even better to be able to import and export variable and configuration tables in XLS, so that a large number could be created offline and imported as a batch.

ilya_baran

@Gavin_Munro
You can copy from the tables (right-click) and paste into configuration tables.  Paste into the variable table is coming soon.

daveaseeman

Love the variable table! @_anton any plans to add the ability to change a variable name in the table and have the name propagate throughout your feature tree so that nothing breaks? That'd be really nice for when you're trying to clean up a model or make it more understandable for someone else you're working with.