Improvements to Onshape - March 14th, 2022

Roy_Mutalik

It's March, and we've reached the 4th Onshape release of this year. Already, we have features that were teased during Onshape Live '22 making it into the product!

Let's jump right in.

GENERAL IMPROVEMENTS

DISSOLVE REPLICATE GROUP

You may now easily dissolve the grouping created from a Replicate feature in an Onshape assembly. 

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/h63apiapoc

By definition, dissolving a Replicate group replaces the parametrically-linked feature in the assembly model with individual parts and mates. This means if additional holes are added in the above example, you would need to use Replicate again to add the instances to any new holes.

SHOW HIDDEN PARTS FROM GRAPHICS WINDOW

Hidden parts can now be shown directly from the graphics window. Simply hover over the location of a hidden part, and use the keyboard shortcut Shift + "Y".

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/80c304d0ic

DRAWING IMPROVEMENTS

DRAWINGS STYLES PANEL FOR DIMENSIONS

A new Styles panel has been added, allowing you to format individual dimensions separately from the Drawing properties.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/v6aw0ps58m

The Styles panel will support additional drawing entities in future releases. Stay tuned!

IMPROVED SECTION VIEW HATCHING

Automatic Section view hatching has been improved to produce clearer views, especially on complex models with many parts.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/qy7x6csmhy

PIN DRAWING VIEW REFERENCES

You may now pin view references in Drawings to a specific version.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/8f17524ihm

Pinned references in Drawings behave the same as pinned references elsewhere in Onshape. 

AUTOMATIC CENTERLINES

Centerlines are now automatically inserted for views with cylindrical geometry. These centerlines are shown by default for part views, but are hidden for assembly views. They can be toggled on or off from the right-click menu.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/5rdsz3xovy

TOGGLE AUTOMATIC CENTERMARKS

Automatically created Centermarks can also be easily toggled on or off from the right-click menu.

TRIM DETAIL-VIEW DIMENSION LINES

Dimension extension lines now more intelligently trim at the view boundaries for Detail views.

RENDER STUDIO IMPROVEMENTS

TRANSFORM PARTS (IN ASSEMBLIES)

You can now move, rotate, and scale individual parts or subassemblies directly within a Render studio of an Onshape assembly. 

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/vs0ahzy26e

LEARNING CENTER IMPROVEMENTS

VIDEO UPDATES

A couple videos have been updated in existing courses.

The Hole feature video in Part Design Using Part Studios now includes using hole tables in a Part Studio and the 

The Variable & Expressions video in Advanced Part Design now includes variable tables, descriptions, and how to update variable names.

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 Documents. Over the next few days, these features will also be available in Documents created before this update.

david_bornstein

Fantastic!, great stuff!

bill_schnoebelen

Wow! I love everything! 

I may actaully try a rendering some day...

brucebartlett

Thanks, look forward to trying some of these

S1mon

A few useful improvements. 

I'm a little concerned about the auto insertion of centerlines. Please make this an option. I don't want to have to hide them every time I add a view. I may want to show select centerlines, but I pretty much never want them all shown by default.

Hans_Ole_Leirvik

Finally Pin reference for a drawing view , thank you

Please do the same for Derive in Part Studios

MBartlett21

@Roy_Mutalik
The changelog doesn't seem to be updated yet

jakeramsley

MBartlett21 said:

@Roy_Mutalik
The changelog doesn't seem to be updated yet

Hi MBartlett21,

You are correct, we are currently having some issues that are preventing the changelog from being deployed.  We're hoping we can get it resolved before the morning, but if not we'll have it updated some time tomorrow.  It's not ideal, we want all of our processes working seamlessly, but I made a decision that the changelog can lag behind and new functionality can be released while we work to update it.

eirik_r_guttulsrud

S1mon said:

A few useful improvements. 

I'm a little concerned about the auto insertion of centerlines. Please make this an option. I don't want to have to hide them every time I add a view. I may want to show select centerlines, but I pretty much never want them all shown by default.

Agreed! I love that there is more functionality around auto-generated drawing content, but I hope it will be somewhat customizable

eirik_r_guttulsrud

What a great update! Now please, remove "Drawing 1" from the name of every new drawing I make. Something for the next update?

Misael

Great updates!!

GWS50

Fabulous, thank you

Alex_Pitt

Wonderful as always! So much good stuff in the last three updates, I'm still catching up.

MichaelPascoe

A++ update team! Fantastic work, thank you.

Jacob_Corder

Thank you Onshape for the continued improvements. The LoftTopologyis going to be way more valuable than one could possibly imagine. it will cut regen time for some of my features in half at least due to me having to split those faces after the loft executes. 

shawn_crocker

Another great one!  Dissolve replicate is perfect!  I have grown to really love the newer replicate functionality.  It is really flexible when creating in-context surfaces to be used as a control for the placement of replicated components.  I have still very often wanted to dissolve the feature.  So great!  Now hopefully we will get the ability to dissolve any of the assembly patterns.  Also very stoked for pinning drawing reference.  Hoping we will get to soon also pin version reference of features in part studios?

nick_lumb

I'm excited by hover and Y to hide a part and hover and SHIFT/Y to show it again!

Erin_Connelly

Love the shift-Y! Would love to see it be able to show parts that are occluded by another part in front, like how holding Alt allows for selecting occluded features.

THOMAS_VIVANT

Excellent improvement for drawings.
In section view, it will be nice to have the possibility to exclude some cylindrical part (the ones without internal shape) from the section cut but still showing them uncut on the section view.

phil_erdley628

Great update!

Can we take this progress with transforming renderings, and use it in a platform to create installation instructions?

SethF

Anyone else catch the freaky eyed face in the dimension style demo? 

romeograham

I second @S1mon 's concern about "show centerlines" on drawings being ON by default. Just opened a drawing where centerlines were unneeded - had to go and manually turn them off on each view.
I think OFF by default (or controlled in drawing format maybe?) might be better.
Also - I may want to be able to use "show/hide edges" to control the visibility of SOME centerlines in a view.
Keep up the great work!

GuidoNADEC

Thanks, great updates

Dieselboy

Is there a way to turn off the centermarks and centerlines when exporting .dxf's?

xTimRice

Huge drawings updates! Thanks team ❤️

PeteYodis

Dieselboy said:

Is there a way to turn off the centermarks and centerlines when exporting .dxf's?

We have a bug on this and are working to correct it as a high priority.  We apologize in the meantime.  

david_rubli136

Thanks for the great updates. I would like to have the centerlines automatically. Can that be in the settings somewhere?

john_mcclary

Great stuff

Like how the section view looks. Now it looks like it was made with a professional cad program. 

Thanks for fixing the detail view dimensions, and adding styles and auto centerlines. 

I agree that auto centerlines should be a choice. Perhaps part of the drawing properties menu. 

Kyler_Walker

Awesome! Dissolve Replicate!  

Tony_C_

PeteYodis said:

Dieselboy said:

Is there a way to turn off the centermarks and centerlines when exporting .dxf's?

We have a bug on this and are working to correct it as a high priority.  We apologize in the meantime.  

Yeah, I just exported a drawing and came over to comment.

That's a brutal bug. Good to know it's being fixed.

MBartlett21

This looks interesting (from the changelog):

FeatureScript: Expose loftTopology in opLoft for stability improvements