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What is the OnShape business plan and roadmap ?
Mark_Sanders
Member Posts: 17 ✭✭
We (testers) are all 'grown-ups' ( and under NDA's :-) )
We also have many years as buyers and end users of various CAD products, switching, learning, crashing and being on the end of the marketing of them. Would it be possible to share the OS business plan, marketing, pricing and roadmap - I am sure we could positively contribute to the discussion.
OnShape looks likely to be excitingly disruptive and early user feedback on the commercial side might help.
We also have many years as buyers and end users of various CAD products, switching, learning, crashing and being on the end of the marketing of them. Would it be possible to share the OS business plan, marketing, pricing and roadmap - I am sure we could positively contribute to the discussion.
OnShape looks likely to be excitingly disruptive and early user feedback on the commercial side might help.
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Comments
Dries
You should write brochures, you summed it up nicely.
Wish more was being done to advance parametric assemblies though. Seems like we're still going to have parts, assemblies and mayhem.
It'd be nice to see a paragraph like this:
Assemblies have been cleaned up so you can easily understand their structure and modifications are a snap. Instead of spending hours agonizing over how a parametric assembly was built, Onshape's improvements reduces this to minutes. Gone are the scary scenarios when a parametric assembly auto-regenerates and you have no idea what changed. Clear and concise design intent is captured throughout every part and assembly. Everything's transparent, easily understood and a joy to work on.
Sue that hotel!!
I think it's fair to say internet access won't become less pervasive. At least in Belgium, you get wifi most everywhere. The two main ISPs here have set up a vast network of free-to-access hotspots. And if wifi doesn't work out, you can use 3G/4G (my data plan has a monthly volume of 5GB... that's a lot of Onshape...).
Still, the issue you mention is probably one of the reasons why no one has yet delivered a production-grade cloud-based CAD tool. Yet it is also the reason why Onshape will be able to offer something completely refreshing and lead the way. Because let's be frank, CAD sharing and compatibility is a complete mess.
Dries
I love the elegant way Onshape has simplified 3D CAD... so far.
I am keen to know which advanced modelling tools will be added, and what their controls, and ease of use will be like ... hopefully the same elegance will shine through on modelling tools such as organic a-class surface creation and manipulation.
I hope my expectations are not too high .. ie browser based CAD with CATIA-like, power, with better-than-solidworks ease of use: thats so obvious to use that manuals are not necessary .... I know that's a high bar, but hey, if re-writing the book, why not ?
For consumer product designers the challenge/mantra for many years has been 'get to know how the user really works and thinks [ethnographics] and then delight them with innovation that works for them (not us), over-delivers technology solutions in better, easy, fun and more elegant ways' ........ well, this is the aim anyway, even if rarely achieved
What this means practically for the best consumer product development is many iterative prototypes each tested with real end users - this can be SO enlightening for designers ... "I thought it was obvious that you have to press that button to make it open - obviously wrong :-) "
Does CAD Software development, go through similar iterative 'observed prototype use' and really listen to feedback, on how to do better ?
Or ... is it so much harder when the users of such CAD tools are:
a) more varied than users of consumer products ? Administrators, Machinery designers, consumer product designers, big co, small co, etc etc
b) Already have years of 'bad CAD habits' ?
So, like when Henry Ford asked potential car buyers what they wanted all they said was 'Faster Horses'
c) Have huge expectations, like me
Without getting too deep, phenomenologically you cannot "design a user experience" - as product designers already know it depends on the product, the user and the situation in which they use the product. What we can do though is co-create a product with our users that will most likely to create a delightful response. We spend a lot of time doing contextual inquiry into how users use CAD, as well as other applications. Being able to use an app wherever there is internet opens up so many more possibilities and challenges than 'traditional' desktop CAD in an office environment. You cannot beat observing users in their natural environments, the development and UX teams do this frequently and we'd welcome any invitation to visit.
We take that user research and create personas - user archetypes. We establish at their needs, their frustrations, must-have functionality. We may not be able to satisfy all persona types with the first release but we can build the foundations for them. For me the most important attribute to each persona is identifying the "awesomeness" factor - we want Onshape to be less about 'minimum viable product' (checking that functionality box) and all about 'minimum badass user'. A recent example: even when we did the 'hidden line removed' project we wanted users to feel awesome because their model looks so good.
Onshape is agile and we work on short development sprints. With your help we'll research, identify solutions and user test, sometimes before we have written any code. This forum and the app feedback tool helps enormously. We can get UI design iterations out of the way before development start and we can refine the code based on the early user feedback. We cannot do everything in a single sprint, but we'll write a roadmap for that feature so you'll see its functionality expand its capabilities over several sprints.
We love to work with people with high expectations. Keep pushing us further.
LearnOnshape facebook group
That's really how we try to act and think and build here at Onshape. We take every click and every pixel seriously and try to build it all into a CAD tool you will truly find not only gets your job done, but also makes you feel awesome.
Yet, your biggest direct competitor, Autodesk, offers a similar model (Pro and free), with a more mature modelling solution ( and drawings) for £25 a month.
So the answer is simply £25 a month, or no more than $60 a month.
JonHirschtick The Price I'd be prepared to pay depends on how universally it meets my needs
For this I'd pay $60 / month (and $100+ / month for premium) ... but I'd be delighted to pay $60 and get premium features/FEA tool :-) (see my scottish/yorkshire roots :-)
Oh and equal Global pricing (UK swks subs are 1.6 x US subs !! ) , with licensing to work anywhere, strictly I am in breach of swks licence depending on where I park my laptop :-)
Like @kevinQuigley I'm a bit concerned about working without fast internet connection .. its kinda cool to CAD on top of a hill/beach/coffeeshop. Is this a no-go ?
I know, super expectations :-) :-)
LearnOnshape facebook group
We hear you on the global pricing -- totally agree. And of course the global licensing -- great point.
In terms of fast internet, and CADing on a hill/beach/mountaintop, I think we work great. I just used Onshape on top of a mountain in Arizona recently. I have a video to prove it.
We like to think that Onshape will let people CAD in *more* places than traditional CAD, not less. Because we run on anything, anywhere there is an internet connection. And, soon, mobile devices too. True, you don't control whether or not there is an internet connection, or how fast it is. But we have at least one user who says they now CAD on the plane (on their MacBook Air) with Onshape, whereas before they never could since their CAD is installed on a workstation in the office.
Every day the coverage and speed of the internet gets better, I think. In the US average network speed grew 50% last year. But desktop PCs cannot get any faster (clock rate limits).
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.
- Wayne Gretzky
Lets not loose sight if this.
Mark
Mark
Dave
Ariel, WA
But I agree that it's a great difference from $0 to $100 only difference being limitation on active documents and 5gb storage. I would like to see something in the middle.
Active users of free might exploit tabs in a way that their user experience in assembly mode and in general navigation suffers (create all your models in one document). And after frustrated with the situation updating to pro just noticing that it doesn't make any difference as the fault is already made.
It's a tough one to come up with decent difference between free and paid;
striping features NO,
advertising in free version NO,
limit documents MAYBE,
limit amount of active tabs inside document MAYBE (would support for healthy structure of documents),
just limit storage space of user documents MAYBE (my favorite),
limited access to oncoming standard parts, dropbox/drive and other libraries on free version YES (allow access in beta though)
My ideal system would be to have:
1. Free 5gb Limited account
2. $50 20gb account (just to lower the step into paid version)
3. $100 unlimited account (1 month free if paid annually)
4. $1200 /year small business license including 5x unlimited accounts for best user experience in collaboration. Yearly agreement.
And of course give away pro licenses for all the beta commentors