The future of OnShape Free Account

don_howe

Beta Thank You Program: In recognition of your contributions to the Onshape Beta, if you sign up for a yearly Professional subscription before December 31, 2015, you will receive two additional months for free.


Is the above message an indicator that those with a free plan will soon loose that status?

Darren_A_Henry

Hi Don

The plans have not changed and Onshape intends to always offer a Free Plan.  The free plan is very important to us. Not only does it enable everyone to try, learn, and use Onshape.  It also allows design professionals to instantly collaborate with anyone including peers, suppliers, and customers.  Remember if you invite or share a document with someone that does not have an Onshape account, we automatically create a free account for them.

We are not the evil empire. We are the rebels. (a little Star Wars humor there)

Darren

pete_yodis

With regards to rebels... at a time when the empires are forcing the issue of backdated subscription models to it's existing customers and expecting the gravy train to continue, Onshape's treatment of it's customers is a breath of fresh air.  The Force Awakens:  https://www.onshape.com/cad-blog/onshapes-core-values-our-statement-of-principles

john_wolter

I think that OnShape's business model is both good for "casual" CAD users and good business as well.  By making quality CAD available to anyone, more people will learn CAD and will be familiar with OnShape's interface.  Sure, most will never need the extra space or the private documents, so they will never upgrade to the paid plan; but some will.  And by creating a community with lots of public files, even the "freeloaders" contribute to a community of content that make the ecosystem more attractive.

3dcad

Future of Onshape free plan is looking very bright - appstore coming soon with bunch of free additions to existing super generous 'same features as paid plan' ecosystem...

michael3424

@3dcad - has OnShape officially stated their intent to make "free" 3rd party programs in the appstore anywhere?  I don't recall seeing that anywhere, but may have just missed it.  I'd love to get more info on that.

3dcad

@michael3424
I'm not 100% sure but I remember reading somewhere that they require or at least encourage for 3rd parties to have at least entry level app for free.

michael3424

@3dcad - thanks; time will tell, I guess.  It seems like it might be difficult for Onshape to enforce that sort of requirement from most suppliers, let alone all.

awk

@michael3424  We require items listed in the App Store to have a free level - that could be a range of things depending on the specific product, it might be limited capacity, time or features. We leave it up to the partner to decide what works best for their situation but we do work with them to explain what we've learned thus far about our users expectations.

There's also no requirement that you have to be a Pro subscriber to make a purchase from the App Store. If you're a free subscriber to Onshape and a tool in the App Store is useful to you please go ahead and spend some money :-)

michael3424

@andrew_kimpton - thanks very much for the encouraging details!

daniel_chow

pete_yodis said:

With regards to rebels... at a time when the empires are forcing the issue of backdated subscription models to it's existing customers and expecting the gravy train to continue, Onshape's treatment of it's customers is a breath of fresh air.  The Force Awakens:  https://www.onshape.com/cad-blog/onshapes-core-values-our-statement-of-principles

Ok I couldn't resist the Star Wars reference. 

Started to design the Death Star III in onShape. This one is many times larger than Death Star II and it would open up and swallow planets whole. Decided it was too hard so I changed the colors and turned it into a Christmas ornament instead.

Feature request: please allow to set parsects as units. 

Merry Christmas guys!  

pete_yodis

Merry Christmas @daniel_chow