Finding the latest release of a drawing

jmccormick

Please help me out - I am sure there is a better way.  Now that I am far enough along the Onshape journey to be releasing drawings, I notice that as soon as I release a drawing, Onshape immediately bumps the revision and adds an asterisk.  While this is very annoying, I can live with it.  What I am having trouble with now is finding the latest release of a drawing.  My current method is to click on the drawing (which pulls up the asterisk version) then click down the Version and History tree until I find the released version.

Is there a better way to find the latest release of a drawing?  I am aware of the search function but without being able to specify the project (kept in a folder) I get tons of results which is just as bad.  Well, I don't have tons of drawings just yet - but when I do have tons of drawings, it will be bad...

jmccormick

I just stumbled onto a solution - for my needs at least.  When I open the drawing tab, RMB on the tab, and there is the option "Revision History".  Clicking on that will bring up a dashboard that allows me to view the release, export the release, and even view the obsoleted release.  This is also available for assemblies - but not for parts as far as I can see.

Thanks, Onshape for responding to my needs so quickly.  

tim_hess427

I agree that this is one place where onshape definitely needs more development. Many defaults are set up to improve the "modeling" workflow and the workflows for accessing and reviewing released items takes a back seat.

When you open a document to edit it, the revision auto-increments because you're in a workspace, where your stuff is "work in progress", so there's no way to guarantee that the drawing hasn't been changed from what was released.

The alternative is to open the history tree for the document (either from the search page or from within the document itself), and directly open the version that has the release of interest.

Other than that, you have to do your best and make use of advanced search features. You can narrow down your search to released items only, and view only drawings, for example. If you haven't released much, that should help a lot. I think you can also apply tags, which could be applied to specific projects and then narrow down your search by tag. The more you can specify properties as you go (PNs, descriptions, part names, etc.) the more valuable your searching can be.

jmccormick

So, it sounds like I am doing it the best way possible at this point.  I used Windchill and Creo here before and accumulated thousands of drawings in just 5 years.  While the Onshape search is great to find released drawings, I cannot search per folder (I separate projects by putting each in a folder.)  Because of this, I will get search results that include all drawings.  This is helpful, but far from ideal.

Tags - I assume you mean labels - are per user only so my labels might not match other user's labels.  

For me - right now - I would be happy if I could filter the search by folder.  I am not sure if that would benefit others though.

jmccormick

I just stumbled onto a solution - for my needs at least.  When I open the drawing tab, RMB on the tab, and there is the option "Revision History".  Clicking on that will bring up a dashboard that allows me to view the release, export the release, and even view the obsoleted release.  This is also available for assemblies - but not for parts as far as I can see.

Thanks, Onshape for responding to my needs so quickly.