Improvements to Onshape - October 29, 2015

lougallo

Update day! This release has a number of time saving bits that many of you have requested.  Improvements were added to a variety of areas like sketching, mates, document sharing and even feedback!  Let's take a look:
Highlights include:

1. NEW Show mate values - Display mate values for distance between mate connectors on-screen while editing.
   
   https://youtu.be/Ta38_Koepq0
   
   
2. Plane improvements - Preselection will automatically select appropriate plane types.
   
   https://youtu.be/kdp5nPA4H_k
   
   
3. NEW Transfer ownership - Documents can be transfered to another user through the Share dialog.  NOTE: The recipient must accept the transfer request for the transfer process to complete.  Acceptance can be done via the Share menu or using the Gear menu on the Documents page.
   
   How to transfer:
   
   
   Accepting a transfer:
   
   
   
4. NEW Center point arcs - Arcs can be created using it's center-point, then both endpoints of the arc.
   
   https://youtu.be/J0qogx9sKWA
   
   
5. NEW Share with support from Feedback - New checkbox option in the Feedback tool to share the document with support.
   
   https://youtu.be/krFzAu99_xI
   
   
6. NEW Custom drawing templates - Configurable drawing templates upon drawing creation
   
   https://youtu.be/ZIF4p5FBjow
   
   
7. Plane by Line Angle - Selection of an additional point to set the new plane's "zero" where the angle is measured from.
   
   
   
   

 Honorable mentions:

• Documents that are created by Users who belong to a Company will be owned by the Company by default.
  
  
  
  
• Documents can now be made public from the Documents page using the Gear menu
  
  
  
  
• Reorder Drawing sheets in the sheets fly-out
  
  
  
  
• NEW Optional view label and/or view scale label notes for all views
  
  
  
  
• New Symbol pulldown menu in Drawing notes
  
  
  
  
• FREE Plan enforcement - The same FREE plan limits are in place but are now enforced once met (Read-only).  Read more here
  
  

We hope you get a chance to give these new features a test drive and let us know what you think.  We are already working on the next releases and thank you for the continued feedback and discussion.  ~Lou

Remember: The updates listed here are now live for all users when creating new documents and over the next few days these features will also be available in documents created before the date of this update.

joris_kofman

awesome updates. I also seem to notice a speed improvement in the drawing studio, maybe you should mention this improvement as well. Speed improvement in drawing studio has been one of the most wanted updates.

lougallo

@joris_kofman Performance is always a focus every release.  Glad you are seeing some bumps in performance.

3dcad

Wow, I'm still in the middle of testing previous updates

Great productivity Onshape!

<my first critic about updates>
"Documents can now be made public from the Documents page using the Gear menu"

- Why do you need straight link to make document public as there is link to share dialog just above?
This is probably convenient for free users who wan't to make a lot of stuff public not to reach limits but have you studied how many pro users need 'quick access' for making documents available to all users?
I thought you try to keep menus as clean as possible for overlapping features and use smart links, this only saves couple of clicks.

</my first critic about updates>

jon_mcintyre

@joris_kofman
As Lou said, performance is a focus for us, especially right now for drawings, but we're still in the early stages of our current efforts to improve drawings performance.  Any improvements you saw were small compared to what we still need to do to get drawings performance up to good levels. 

joris_kofman

@jon_mcintyre it will be interesting to follow your efforts on the speed front

in the mean time I discovered that I was unable to copy out of an annotation text box. Pasting externally generated text did work however.

brucebartlett

If I am not mistaken looks like the Hide option's have been fixed up to include "Hide", "Hide other parts" & "Hide all parts".  Seem's to work consistently for all objects i.e mates, mate connector's, sketches, planes, etc. Great work. 

 https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/11751#Comment_11751

andrew_troup

That's great news, @brucebartlett  - and not for the first time, I'm wishing there would be an exhaustive list, somewhere, of the changes in each build.

michał_1

New tab Create Application?

_Ðave_

Where?

brucebartlett

@DaVicki Under "+" bottom left. I wasn't sure about that one either @michal_1.

3dcad

@DaVicki

In the menu where you create new tab..

_Ðave_

"Create Application" Interesting, do we know what it's for or how to use it?

andrew_troup

Hmm ... this dialog comes up : 

jakeramsley

3dcad said:

Wow, I'm still in the middle of testing previous updates

Great productivity Onshape!

<my first critic about updates>
"Documents can now be made public from the Documents page using the Gear menu"

- Why do you need straight link to make document public as there is link to share dialog just above?
This is probably convenient for free users who wan't to make a lot of stuff public not to reach limits but have you studied how many pro users need 'quick access' for making documents available to all users?
I thought you try to keep menus as clean as possible for overlapping features and use smart links, this only saves couple of clicks.

</my first critic about updates>

In the case of having a document that is inactive that you are willing to make public, the gear menu is the method of doing so.  This prevents the need of the document being active to publicize (is that the word?) them.

viru

Thanks to Onshape team for new updates!

The new show mate values feature will be very useful in assembly creation !!!

3dcad

@jakeramsley Can you show the link only for inactive documents? Or replace 'Share' with 'Make public' when share dialog can't be used? 
I don't want to accidentally click 'Make public' -links even though there is confirmation dialog behind..

philip_thomas

@andrew_troup - Patience young Padawan. Cool stuff coming. That is for internal testing only - not customer facing. Sometimes we put stuff on the production servers so that we can test it before we reveal everything to the world.

philip_thomas

The other thing worth pointing out to this group (the usual suspects) - especially considering the request to document all changes, is the fact that there was a significant change to our UI that now allows preselection. You can see this in the plane creation functionality and soon all aspects of Onshape. This is a significant productivity enhancement. I point this out because sometimes we develop a muscle memory that prevents us from learning newer/better/faster ways of doing things.

don_howe

I was all exciting about the new custom drawing templates but was disappointed to learn that I can't specify a custom size (ie 72 x 24) necessary for me if I want to have drawings of my model ship at 1/4 scale. Am I missing something, is there no way to do this? 

joris_kofman

philip_thomas said:

The other thing worth pointing out to this group (the usual suspects) - especially considering the request to document all changes, is the fact that there was a significant change to our UI that now allows preselection. You can see this in the plane creation functionality and soon all aspects of Onshape. This is a significant productivity enhancement. I point this out because sometimes we develop a muscle memory that prevents us from learning newer/better/faster ways of doing things.

preselection is a big deal, together with shortcut keys it saves a lot of mouse meters (or ~yards for you non metric people out there)

3dcad

preselection 

thanks for listening

fastwayjim

More. Awesome. Stuff. Thanks guys!!!

daryntaylor

I'm continually amazed at the speed you guys are developing Onshape, I can't keep up
Please keep up the good work, its going to pay off, no doubt about it.

clayton_ertley

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE CENTER POINT ARCS!!! They were EXTREMELY helpful for my last model which I put up for MOTW.

I hope you will soon add an update allows us to create folder in the feature tree, mine get kind of difficult to navigate as they are soooo long.

Great updates!!! Keep them coming!
-Clay

fastwayjim

philip_thomas said:

The other thing worth pointing out to this group ... is the fact that there was a significant change to our UI that now allows preselection.

Somehow I skipped over this the last time I was on the forum! Woah, this is kind of a big deal.

andrew_troup

Preselection (it seems to me) will be particularly beneficial once we have some more powerful tools to streamline the selection of multiple entities

- in sketches (chain select, most particularly, but also selection filters and other productivity turbo boost features)

- and on solids (currently, the only entity type supporting automatic multiple selection is faces, whereas edges are arguably more deserving of assisted picking, because they present a narrow target for manual methods, requiring pinpoint mouse work)

I think "Select Other" could  benefit from some nuanced enhancements.

But much more importantly, I'm hoping the current "Create Selection" RMB tool will be greatly expanded, enhanced and improved to become an object of envy and desire to other MCAD packages and their uses.

(Incidentally, at present, it is NOT greyed out in situations where it is not useful, eg when editing sketches, which is a bit misleading).

I wonder if that single  "Create Selection" RMB menu pick, made modal, could become the front end for the entire quiver of streamlining tools (even including making adjustments to selection filters, possibly?).
At its best, the Onshape interface design sets new standards  for simplicity hand-in-hand with power and elegance.
The implementations of sketch patterns, the Hole feature, and Mate Connector re-orientation are just a few awesome examples which spring to mind.
It would be insanely great to see that level of excellence achieved in an overarching "Turbo Selection" toolset.