My Benefits of Onshape so far.

peter_hall

I have found the ability to import a step file from potential customers and the ability to then manipulate and hide various parts of their welded fabrications very useful in viewing their construction path.
What are others finding of practical benefit (both new and practiced 3D Cad users).

joris_kofman

I find it extremely handy to have my files accessible everywhere I go. That also means i can use the printer at the office while drawing at home

_Ðave_

I like the way the mouse works with spin and panning, The multiple part studio is nice if the can find a way to import a part the derived part deal is a real pain.

3dcad

Among many things, I really like easy sharing with sales. My best productivity boost comes from multi-part studios with reusable sketches.

joris_kofman

@3dcad I also really like the idea of multipart studios, for stationary designs, it saves the whole mating stuff up and that is a great productivity boost

pete_yodis

Massive reduction in file/data management hassles when working as part of a team.  Sometimes this is not well understood upfront by many purchasers of current MCAD products.  By the time they realize the huge set of issues with numerous copies of the data and how you handle it with numerous people, you've already created a mountain of data for the products you are designing that demands to be managed well.  The well managing of the data incurs education, costs to implement, hardware to implement, continual maintenance and testing and configuration, hassles with IT and permissions, and additional purchases, etc... ad nauseam.  It's a tricky balance for people that are designers and design engineers first, and then find themselves working their way into often awkward qausi-IT roles to make it all work.  For some it's fun to expand your horizons and tool sets a bit, but when it comes down to it there is so much inefficiency and productivity lost here.  Onshape so completely destroys that set of issues, it's not even funny.  It's frighteningly good in that regard.  My favorite phrase... "It's like massive multi-player online gaming for engineers."

andrew_troup

For me, it's still way too soon to say.
I hopped on the train because it looked as if it might end up going places I very much want to go, and I wanted to be on that train rather than running after it.

matthew_menard

I really like multi part studios.  Since my day job is making static brazed components made from several parts, multi part studios would work great.  For the time being though, there is a zero chance of migrating to OnShape because a lot of our components are ITAR controlled and there is currently no way to be in compliance with those regulations using almost any cloud based system. 

Also, like @andrew_troup I see a lot of potential and would rather be on the leading edge than the following one.  I also realized a few months ago that I had really gone all in on Solidworks and wanted to see what else was out there.  OnShape and other free modelers have given me a fair amount of confidence that I can apply my techniques successfully across a variety of software packages. 

pete_yodis

matthew_menard said:

For the time being though, there is a zero chance of migrating to OnShape because a lot of our components are ITAR controlled and there is currently no way to be in compliance with those regulations using almost any cloud based system.

@matthew_menard I wonder if that will be changing in due time.  I can see arguments to be made that systems like these are far safer.  Any thoughts?  I'm curious.

http://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/

matthew_menard

pete_yodis said:

@matthew_menard I wonder if that will be changing in due time.  I can see arguments to be made that systems like these are far safer.  Any thoughts?  I'm curious.

http://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/

I asked something along those lines in the "Shared Documents Security" thread, seen here:

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/10430/#Comment_10430

Towards the bottom, I linked to some articles about a contractor trying to get the DoD's blessing to use cloud services, as well as to the Amazon gov cloud site you mentioned. 

I am certainly no expert on export controls though, so I don't know exactly what problems lie ahead of getting cloud services that are acceptable.  I'm sure it probably goes against their main marketing and selling points, but it would be nice to be able to have a company set up their own local OnShape server.  It would obviously be a very costly option, but if quality continues the way it is, the cost may be worth it to pay for a big, expensive server (or array of servers even) if it means their designs are stored in-house on the company controlled cloud.

This is all just Friday musings while I should be doing real work though, so there may some flaws in my assumptions. 

pete_yodis

matthew_menard said:

pete_yodis said:

@matthew_menard I wonder if that will be changing in due time.  I can see arguments to be made that systems like these are far safer.  Any thoughts?  I'm curious.

http://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/

I asked something along those lines in the "Shared Documents Security" thread, seen here:

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/10430/#Comment_10430

Towards the bottom, I linked to some articles about a contractor trying to get the DoD's blessing to use cloud services, as well as to the Amazon gov cloud site you mentioned. 

I am certainly no expert on export controls though, so I don't know exactly what problems lie ahead of getting cloud services that are acceptable.  I'm sure it probably goes against their main marketing and selling points, but it would be nice to be able to have a company set up their own local OnShape server.  It would obviously be a very costly option, but if quality continues the way it is, the cost may be worth it to pay for a big, expensive server (or array of servers even) if it means their designs are stored in-house on the company controlled cloud.

This is all just Friday musings while I should be doing real work though, so there may some flaws in my assumptions. 

@matthew_menard Just curious... what if Amazon servers were located within DoD facilities... or is it more than that?  I tend to wonder if very high tech companies blend with some gov entities over time.  Is that somewhat inevitable with the pace of change?

andrew_troup

If I had to single out one feature of Onshape which is an ongoing delight above all others,
for me it would be NEVER  (to a very close approximation) losing work, whether due to a crash or to a fumble.

3dcad

@andrew_troup  If you spend time building one sketch and after hours of drawing (without timeouts) accidentally hit decline (red cross) you will lose it =( 
It is good and bad, good because you can escape without 'saving changes' and bad if you meant to hit accept.

I wouldn't mind if there was confirmation dialog for decline, I spend a lot of time with single sketches and I would like to have them covered even against my own fumbles.. I will create IR for voting..

andrew_troup

Interesting, @3dcad - I guess because I'm always modelling in snatched moments, I never model for long between timeouts.

I like your idea of a confirmation dialog for decline (perhaps with a "Don't ask again" checkbox, together with some centralised list of such declined choices so you can UNdecline them at a future date)

3dcad

Even better solution would be to save a microversion of declined sketches to history so you could just go back if declined by mistake..

andrew_troup

Hmm... that seems to me to further complicate the management and maintenance of history (already not exactly child's play), with not much extra benefit.

This is a pretty rare or specialised occurrence, isn't it, even for someone like you?

The list of declined checkboxes (as in Solidworks) works across all aspects of the user interface, a "One stop shop" for people whose circumstances change, or who regret a decision, or who simply fumble and tick instead of dismiss.

Perhaps even Windows could do with something like that, for people who accidentally accept the suggested application to open files with a particular extension...(or who opt to save passwords on a shared computer to their favourite porn sites, etc....)

3dcad

I suppose confirmation dialog would be fine and the preferences you mention would be great.. I'm waiting for Onshape to seriously begin with user preferences before opening my big mouth on that area

Concerning windows and browser, windows has the centralized list you mentioned and at least firefox and chrome has the list of saved passwords centralized and editable in settings. But if you have passwords to good porn sites, of course you should share them with other user of that computer  

andrew_troup

Good porn sites? isn't that an oxy-whatsit, like "military intelligence", or "Reality TV"? 

3dcad

Here is the link for the IR about having confirmation dialog to sketch decline, vote if you think it would be good to have
https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/1980/confirmation-are-you-sure-dialog-to-sketch-decline