Get started questions.

Willis_R_Campbell

I understand the cost for a seat is $1500.00.  Is this correct?  What is cost of the two week training and is it in addition to the "Seat" cost?  How long from the time i get the Seat is it until I start the training?  What is the training length in days and hours per day?
Is there anything else I need to put on my computer to get onshape and training and is there any cost for such?  
I have some Solidworks experience.  Is this helpful?
Is there a contact person I have and how do I reach them with questions etc?  Tell me how A "KEY" works for allowing third parties to view my work but they cannot change any drawings?  
Things I am interested in learning beyond the making of parts etc.  -  Project management of particular projects.  How do I set up files and keep them all straight including common parts for any or all projects?
I am getting ready to buy but may take up to 30 days yet, but please answer the above questions plus the total cost of getting a system set up to preform as described in my questions.  I need to know all the costs.
Thank you.  Willis R. Campbell

nick_papageorge073

I was in your boat 6 months ago. I had many years of prior Creo experience at a large coronation and was looking to switch to something more economical at the small startup company I'm at now. What I did was sign up for the free hobby license (using a personal email address) over Christmas break. I did all the tutorials (all free) using the hobby version for 2 weeks straight. The personal version never expires, you could do that over 2 years if you wanted to. After that, I was confident that Onshape would work well for my company. I went back after Xmas vacation and told my boss lets buy it. Once you buy it, there are few training modules that are unlocked and become free (that are not available at all for the hobby version). These are especially useful if you are doing injection molded consumer parts. These training modules are for the advance surfacing features of Onshape.

From a computer standpoint, you literally do not need to buy anything but a cheap PC/Mac. No fancy GPU, no extra software, no drivers, no software install. You simply logon using any web browser.

Total cost is 1500 for the Basic tier. This is what I started my company on. But, we added a couple of employees and switched to the Professional tier for 2100. Really the difference is we are all under one umbrella organization now, and there is an official ECR process built in. If you are working solo, the Basic is all you will ever need, IMO.

There is also a training module that is offered once you are a paid subscriber. There is a cost associated with it, as its instructor led. I did it, and while it was good, it was exactly the same material that was covered in the self-paced courses. If you really go through them all diligently and understand them, then I'd personally skip the paid instructor course.

Good luck.

MichaelPascoe

You can try it for free before you buy it.

I definitely recommend going with Onshape. One of my favorate things about Onshape is how they make real updates to the software, not simple bug fixes. Also, you can create your own custom tools to help you model faster for your specific applications.

Here is the Onshape learning center: Onshape Learning Center

tim_hess427

I'm not very familiar with training as I've mostly learned by trial, error, and reading the forums here. 

Regarding the sharing - its very similar to sharing documents with google docs, dropbox, or similar services. For each document, you can set permissions linked to people's onshape accounts. There are a lot of options for different scenarios, so it's hard to explain everything here. However, the gist of it is you can either make a document "public" so that anybody with a link can see it, or you can share it with specific individuals (they must have onshape accounts, but they could be a free account for read-only access) or groups of individuals that you define in your company settings. You can also specify view-only access or edit access depending on your use case. When a person opens the document they only see what they're allowed to see.

The project and data management question is also complicated to answer because your best workflows will depend a lot on what you're trying to do. In general, there is a lot of flexibility in how you arrange your parts, assemblies, and other data. If you can talk to a sales team member or describe what you want to do in the forums, people will be able to give you more specific suggestions. 

Onshape will run on inexpensive computers (and there are android and iOS apps as well), however, there are still some benefits to having dedicated graphics cards and additional ram (gaming PCs generally have a good cost/performance tradeoff for onshape). Again, this is also highly dependent on your models. Simple machines and machined parts will run just fine on low powered hardware, but large complex assemblies will likely slow things down a bit. 

As posted above, the learning center is a good resource. You can also create a free account (note that your data will not be private in the free account) to give things a test run!