Sharing Between Enterprises?

S1mon

We're (an Enterprise) trying to work with a partner who is also an Enterprise customer. I was very surprised to find out that there's no way to do direct collaboration from Enterprise to Enterprise. It seems like professional users have better luck in this regard.

I know from another experience, that it's possible to change ownership from the Enterprise to a personal account connected with the Enterprise (in cad.onshape.com, not <company>.onshape.com), and then share with the personal account of another Enterprise user. At that point the only way to bring that into the other Enterprise is to copy it or transfer ownership.

What are Enterprise users from two different Enterprises doing in order to work together?

nick_papageorge073

I noticed the same when I was deciding between Standard, Professional, and Enterprise. I'm curious the answer as well, even though my company will be staying at Professional.

EvanReese

I want to know this too. One of Onshape's big things is collaboration, and some of our clients use Onshape too, but right now it's not straightforward to collaborate this way.

EvanReese

A note here. I really don't like that guest users cost the enterprise the same as a full user seat. As long as the guest is already paying full price for their own onshape seat, they shouldn't be billed for twice. This isn't a solution for us, and is another example of an area where Enterprise is worse than just using professional seats. This is assuming I'm reading the help docs right.

tim_hess

As I read it a "Guest" could also be a "light user", which is billed at a different rate, right?

"In addition to being either a full or light user, a user may also have a status of either Member or Guest..." 

I think that makes sense. You could hire a contract engineer for a specific project and make them a full use for a limited amount of time (Guest+Full User) versus a supplier that's a "Guest" + "Light User". 

However, I agree in that it does look like the user could be essentially billed for twice. Weird.

Tangential rant: I still think "Light Users" should be (nearly) free. The collaborative value comes from having everybody working from the same source of truth. But paying for all those users seems like it could get out of hand quickly (disclaimer: I don't know the actual cost, but almost anything > 0 seems expensive for private read-only access to CAD information, because the alternative is to export a PDF and leave the ecosystem ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  ).

EvanReese

@tim_hess427 I agree very much on the lite users. They're like 1/10 the cost of a full seat, which is still a prohibitive barrier for most of the ways I'd like to use them, like collaborating with clients.

S1mon

Light users are listing at $350/year as far as I know. They can "view, measure, export, or comment".

Define "nearly free"... In some contexts $350/yr is a couple hours of billable time, in others it would be a stopping point. For me personally, the cost of adding a Light user also includes the friction of multiple conversations to get it approved and get Onshape to add it on their end.

This learning center link has some useful details on some of the various scenarios:

https://learn.onshape.com/learn/article/working-with-third-parties-using-onshape-enterprise

 
The help has some details on Adding Guest Users to Enterprises:
https://cad.onshape.com/help/Content/EnterpriseHelp/Content/users.htm

Definitely having to pay extra for a Guest user seat seems ridiculous when both parties are already paying for Enterprise. 

S1mon

Vote here for an improvement:
https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/21218/collaborating-between-enterprises

Nath_McC

I wish there were an option to have an approver account, where there is a small cost for an 'approver' who can view, measure, or approve a document. 
Our process includes a production check/approval and an engineering check/approval. Neither person using CAD currently review the engineering drawings only, and I would love this is move digital.

EvanReese

Nath_McC said:

I wish there were an option to have an approver account, where there is a small cost for an 'approver' who can view, measure, or approve a document. 
Our process includes a production check/approval and an engineering check/approval. Neither person using CAD currently review the engineering drawings only, and I would love this is move digital.

I'm pretty sure that's what a light user is: https://cad.onshape.com/help/Content/Light_user.htm?tocpath=Enterprise|_____1

wout_theelen541

In addition Evan_Reese said:

A note here. I really don't like that guest users cost the enterprise the same as a full user seat. As long as the guest is already paying full price for their own onshape seat, they shouldn't be billed for twice. This isn't a solution for us, and is another example of an area where Enterprise is worse than just using professional seats. This is assuming I'm reading the help docs right.

I was also wondering about this from the employee perspective. It makes more sense for someone to have their own account for all their learning center and forum participation and then use the companies enterprise account for CAD.