Improvements to Onshape - April 19th, 2021

Lindsay_Early

It's April already, and we are back at it again with another update. We have made some Sheet metal enhancements and a lot of great Drawing updates. Let's take a look!

CAD IMPROVEMENTS

SHEET METAL IMPROVEMENTS

The Sheet metal model feature dialog now has collapsible group boxes to make it easier to navigate the options. It is separated out into groups named Selections, General, Material, and Relief.

DISSOLVING SUBASSEMBLIES

You can promote the contents of a subassembly into a higher level assembly using the new Dissolve subassembly action.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/nbxfik1nxc

DRAWING IMPROVEMENTS

AUXILIARY VIEW IMPROVEMENTS

Now, Auxiliary views can be created from a Section view.

REVISION TABLE IMPROVEMENTS

The revision description in a Revision table writes to the drawing Custom property “Revision description”. This allows you to search it in Onshape or even link to an external system.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/8hy0mjt9ec

SMART DIMENSION TOOL IMPROVEMENTS

The smart dimension tool is enhanced to show wall thickness when dimensioning between two concentric circles. It also now adds a diameter symbol for the silhouetted edges of a cylindrical face.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/swwkz7hrfe

VIEW LABELS

Add a view label to any drawing view from the View properties. The new label is attached and will move with the view when it is repositioned.

MOBILE IMPROVEMENTS

IOS ASSEMBLY CONFIGURATIONS

iOS now supports changing configurations within an assembly.

ENTERPRISE IMPROVEMENTS

AZURE SSO

Onshape is now included in the Azure Active Directory (AD) gallery. This simplifies the setup required to link the two together for Enterprise subscriptions. The Help is updated with full instructions.

LEARNING CENTER IMPROVEMENTS

ONSHAPE SURFACING TIPS AND BEST PRACTICES

A new technical briefing, Onshape Surfacing Tips and Best Practices, is now released to help you learn tips and tricks when modeling surfaces and curves in Onshape.

GENERAL IMPROVEMENTS

COMPANY-WIDE EXPORT RULES

The previously released feature to set Export rules is now available as a company-wide setting for Professional and Enterprise level users. 

PASSWORD REQUIREMENTS

As part of our ongoing effort to maintain the highest standards of security, we have updated the way new passwords are enforced. All new account passwords and password changes are now checked against the database at https://haveibeenpwned.com using a K-Anonymity check. Onshape cannot access the password for any account. All checks are done with hashed passwords that cannot be reversed by us. Passwords that have been compromised will be rejected even if they meet the complexity requirements. This change will not invalidate current account passwords.

Please review the NIST password guidelines for choosing appropriately secure passwords. Onshape also encourages all users to use 2 Factor authentication, but this is optional. 

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

drawing improvements look great. And lessons on surfaces should be helpful.  Thanks Onshape team!

Ben_Tek_Pac

Excellent Improvements! My favourites: Sheetmetal improvements and View Labels

EvanReese

I knew to come look for this update even though I've not seen my notification yet because I noticed the typeface of the measure tool changed  Good work, folks!

BenTaylor

@Evan_Reese that's exactly how I noticed too! Even the smallest improvements are great to see.

Alex_Kempen

Great update! One question - is there a reason why the optional mapFunction parameter of the new FeatureScript tolerantSort function doesn't have to actually be a function? It's weird because the other function which takes a mapFunction argument - mapArray - does require mapFunction to actually be a function. It's not really a big deal, but it is sort of strange.

Theo_R

Great improvements to drawings. Dissolve subassembly for the win! Thanks!

Manoj_Patil

Dissolve assembly was a great one! looking for a long time. Drawing improvements are all much needed. Thanks, Onshape Team

john_mcclary

Thank you for Dissolve and keeping up on security

gerhard_swanepoel

At last...wall thickness!!!

bill_rayner

Great collection. And special thanks to John Desilets and his clear voice from the workshop!

jonathan_sessa

These changes are awesome! But I would really love to see assembly mirroring added soon! Thanks, guys for all the great additions. Love Onshape so much!

Alex_Pitt

Nice improvements! Thank you!  Particularly like the subassy dissolve and the drawing view labels.

shawn_crocker

Nice to see the dissolve sub-assembly ability.  Now if we could only also choose to label the sub-assembly as dissolved in the BOM but stay as an assembly in the tree.  I new we would be getting an update today because onshape was rather slow and unpredictable yesterday.  Really wishing more of the the obvious sheetmetal shortcomings that you immediately find when searching improvements would start to get addressed though.  I guess if you are completely new to sheet metal the sheetmetal window could come across as confusing.

MichaelPascoe

Thanks Onshape team!

Brendan_Leipelt

Smart dimension and aux view improvements look great! Would be nice if parts/studios could be promoted to assembly as well as subs

_anton

@Alex_Kempen - the argument can be undefined too. The idea's to avoid mapping the array if we can.

bill_schnoebelen

Dissolved Assemblies should be a great way to put in a fastener stack multiple places then dissolve them. Fastener stacks = bolt, flat washer, flat washer, lock washer, nut

Also like the dimension of cylinder!

EvanReese

@John_P_Desilets
Very nice work on the Surfacing technical briefing!

brucebartlett

Thanks, Great to see another update. Dissolve will be handy. 

ian_d_gardiner

Thanks! I like the Rev table property and highlighting Rev triangles. Nice work

Ron_van_Dijk

Great work Onshape Team!
Can't wait to try the updates.
Keep up the work, you have a great product!

Thanks.

giuseppe_savarese280

Great work but you should put in a rendering system, and you should put the possibility to add some writing with arrows on the 2D sheets.
these arrows with writing I made them by hand, it took a long time.

Ethan_Deal_

I think a feature you should add would be hatching for drawings so I can get cool patterns on my models

MichaelPascoe

Legit surfacing tips. I didn't know some of those! 

GWS50

Thank you for the surfacing tips, it all seems to make more sense now

Lindsay_Early

Alex_Kempen said:

Great update! One question - is there a reason why the optional mapFunction parameter of the new FeatureScript tolerantSort function doesn't have to actually be a function? It's weird because the other function which takes a mapFunction argument - mapArray - does require mapFunction to actually be a function. It's not really a big deal, but it is sort of strange.

Hello Alex. I recommend you file a support ticket with this question and they'll be able to answer it for you.

ilya_baran

@Lindsay_Early
Anton already answered it here

kai_yang

Good efforts. Auxiliary view still needs a call out line, similar to section view. Otherwise, if we break alignment (almost always), there is no view reference to the original view.

ryan_mcgoldrick47

Just wondering if anyone could help me, I have set up Export naming Convention rules  as in attatched image, and it works fine, the problem I am running in to is that we already have our part names manually entered in as in the above format, so in the export I essentially get it repeated twice. Is there a way to have part names also determined by rules? and or is it possible to have the part name as a sort of display name? we would ideally like to see all the project, item, version in the part name when used in assemblies etc but Also need the part itself to have a unique name such as "Bolt" would I be best to create a custom property in categories for "Part Name" then if possible re-name the onshape "Name property to "Display name"

ryan_mcgoldrick47

In essence, can we drive a parts displayed name by other property fields? Also secondly can we please get  a way to re-arrange the properties order within a Category, Currently they are displayed Alphabetically when editing, however in the workspaces when viewing properties they display in seemingly completely random order.