Realistically, is a free Onshape account with just 100MB usable?

john_smith077

Hello

I have discovered a potentially fatal flaw for us free users of Onshape.  

For example, I just built an Onshape model today it has:
- 7 Variables
- 8 pretty simple sketches
- 12 Extrudes
- 7 Fillets
- 1 mate

And it occupies a full 44MB - that's very nearly half of my free 100MB account. 

Is there any way around this? 
e.g. Is there any way to store the parametric data in some other format onto you local disk?

Thanks

J


PS. How on earth can Onshape be getting through quite so much memory in any case? 
PPS. Yes I am emptying my trash. But It looks like I only have space for 2 pretty small models before I run out of space. WTF?

_Ðave_

If you make your document public you'll have 5gb of storage. Unless your document is top secret then you'll need a professional account.

john_smith077

_Dave_ said:

If you make your document public you'll have 5gb of storage. Unless your document is top secret then you'll need a professional account.

Fair point. But my model involves IP and can not be 'published'. Not for a few months at least.

_Ðave_

John, Leave the document name as "Untitled document" and no one would possible stumble across it among the 10,000's untitled documents.

john_smith077

_Dave_ said:

John, Leave the document name as "Untitled document" and no one would possible stumble across it among the 10,000's untitled documents.

Not a bad plan. But not ideal. (For one thing over time it will become increasingly hard to find my own documents.)

I was on the verge of telling several friends & contacts about Onspace but I see that level of lack of privacy as being quite a problem. 

_Ðave_

Yes, I thought we were just concerned about this one possibly a few. If you have that many documents containing IP then you really need to have a pro account.

øyvind_kaurstad

As mentioned in other threads, a middle tier membership for Onshape would probably be a big sales hit for them.

That said, your model can probably be reduced quite a bit in size if you copy it, and then delete the original (remember to empty the trash). This will purge the document history, which often takes up a lot of space.

_Ðave_

The problem for me isn't that I want a lower tier. I just don't feel that Onshape is worth $1200 a year yet. There's no doubt in my mind that they will be in a few years. Therefore they should charge accordingly let's say this month the price is $25 and each month there's an automatic increase of $2 till we reach $100/month. In about 3 years everyone will be paying $100 and satisfied because the product would be worth it by then. Onshape would have 1000's of sign-ups immediately and 10,000's more customer's in 3years than at the rate they a progressing now. IMHO

john_smith077

> a middle tier membership for Onshape would probably be a big sales hit for them.
Clearly that's what Onshape think. Clearly that's not what Fusion 360 think. The truth is that it depends on precisely how it's priced. Personally I think - particularly with the coming tidal wave of affordable 3D printing - that it's pure folly for Onshape not to have any option for the keen hobbyist to give Onshape money. 


> your model can probably be reduced quite a bit in size if you copy it
Nice idea, but I just tried that. But copy workspace didn't save a single MB i.e. it's still 44MB !  

coleman

In my opinion the free plan is a great way to test onshape before purchasing.  A full-featured free version is WAY better than a 30 day trial. 

john_smith077

I don't know to what extent Onshape regard Fusion 360 from Autodesk as being direct competition, and I know that it's a long-term strategy that Onshape may be insufficiently well funded to attempt, but as a (lean!) startup myself, the enlightened offer of being (completely) "Free for students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and startups" very, VERY nearly got my business and is where I'll be heading next if I fall out with Onshape.

tom_scarince

Can't...  Resist...

jmarasch

Your attempting to make something out of nothing. Once you figure out how to properly manage your space theirs not a lot you cant do. When you copy your project you have to wait for the copy to purge its information, it will get smaller. the only way it wouldn't is if you have uploaded other models and don't delete their tab before making the copy. Ive done several large projects with the limits that were imposed and sure it sucks having to copy and purge but who cares is a free CAD application that works better than the other "free" apps. Your like the fat kid in the candy store who complains about not getting 2 free pieces of candy.

adam_mercier

Yes very usable.
Here's what I built using the free Onshape plan using copy workspace workaround : 40mb



On the other hand im working on this public model that I never copied : 250mb

 The real limitation of coping workspace is the risk of data loss and the inability to share your document on the long term.

I consulted solidworks guys to get a quote for my business, but we can't afford the asking price of ~ 6000€+1200€/y 
We are getting Onshape pro instead, I'm doing most of the CAD but with Onshape my partner will be able to modify, review, comment  and acces our project files with just one pro acces.

john_smith077

jmarasch said:

> When you copy your project you have to wait for the copy to purge its information, it will get smaller. the only way it wouldn't is
> if you have uploaded other models and don't delete their tab before making the copy.

It's quite flaky. When you first hit [gear icon] ==> Copy workspace, there is no sign of it having worked. So you hit "My Documents" on the left and initially there is still nothing there. But then after c30 seconds or so the new copy does appear. But it's still the same size as the original. You wait 30 seconds and reload the entire page, but no change. And then about 1 minute later, OMG, my 40MB file is down to 1MB. 

That's more like it - all is forgiven   


> Your like the fat kid in the candy store who complains about not getting 2 free pieces of candy.
No. Incorrect simile - read again.
I am a kid in a candy store, who doesn't have much money, who doesn't even want to eat candy all day, but who has  a strong sense of fair play and so this kid actually wants to pay a fair price to the shopkeeper - who wants to pay at least something - so as to keep the shopkeeper in business. But this kid doesn't want to sign up for the $100/month "As Much Candy As You Can Eat" deal that all the rich, fat-cat kids are signing up for.

_Ðave_

  @adam_mercier That was my original intent like you having 1 account and others working off my documents from a free account. I felt that was acceptable behavior also. I changed my mind after reading a post where Onshape employees felt that it was unacceptable and is easily detectable and if it becomes a problem they may look into ways to stop it.

 You should contact Onshape with your intent before forking out cash and finding out sometime down the road. Best yet someone from Onshape could let us all know if this is acceptable or not. If this is acceptable behavior I could reconsider advise to employer about not buying into an Onshape pro account and just pay SW maint. at this time.

3dcad

_Dave_ said:

  @adam_mercier That was my original intent like you having 1 account and others working off my documents from a free account. I felt that was acceptable behavior also. I changed my mind after reading a post where Onshape employees felt that it was unacceptable and is easily detectable and if it becomes a problem they may look into ways to stop it.

 You should contact Onshape with your intent before forking out cash and finding out sometime down the road. Best yet someone from Onshape could let us all know if this is acceptable or not. If this is acceptable behavior I could reconsider advise to employer about not buying into an Onshape pro account and just pay SW maint. at this time.

I know what discussion you are referring to, you should really quote such information before creating another truth.

The discussion concerned clear exploiting of the system so that one pro just creates the docs and shares them to free plan people to work with. This is possible because those docs will not be counted against free limits and such continuous behavior would not be allowed.

If your intension is not exploiting the system with 1 pro + several freebies - you are perfectly good to go!

Collaboration is exactly why Onshape does allow free plan to work with bigger docs than limits allow if it's shared to you from paid account.

I really do hope that we all understand how nice guys we are dealing with, let's not force them to create more restrictions and rules to avoid exploitation of this brilliant system. 

john_smith077

Out of interest - is it just me who, should I get to really like Onshape, actually wants to pay Onshape *something*, but can't afford anything like $100/month?

_Ðave_

  @3dcad You are correct that is the discussion I referred to and even with your explanation I'm having a problem with understanding the limits between collaboration and exploitation. That is why I requested an opinion from Onshape.

  I agree and I wouldn't want to do anything that would cause Onshape to restrict the benefit of collaboration.

 I think that a more likely solution would be to close the account of the abuser therefore an explanation of where that line of abuse is would be appreciated.

 As far as the real nice guys you are referring to, well I'll just say that there are no nice guys in this business except maybe 3Dcad.

_Dave_

kevin_quigley

In answer to the original question. No. As soon as you copy content you use it up. I genuinely struggle to see why Onshape place these restrictions on free users. The problem is Onshape needs to convert users of other systems who are prepared to pay but there is no way to really do this with real data. Benchmarking needs comparative data and extensive testing on real jobs. 100MB is totally inadequate for this task. So Onshape are asking benchmarkers to pay to test it. Not going to happen.

3dcad

_Dave_ said:

 As far as the real nice guys you are referring to, well I'll just say that there are no nice guys in this business except maybe 3Dcad.

_Dave_

And the reason for me being nice is that I'm not in this business

3dcad

@kevin_quigley
I suppose someone who is seriously testing and runs out of space, could contact Onshape and ask for them to share a document which they can grow as much as they need?

michael3424

john_smith077 said:

Out of interest - is it just me who, should I get to really like Onshape, actually wants to pay Onshape *something*, but can't afford anything like $100/month?

You are not the only one, but Onshape has made it clear that the only two choices are the free plan or the $100/month Pro plan and that they have no interest in a "middle" tier at some intermediate price point.  I'd go $35-50/month, but that's not going to happen any time soon so I'm staying with the free plan until there is enough income to justify the Pro plan.  They are running a business that needs to make a profit and they seem smart enough to have done their market research so I respect their decision.

øyvind_kaurstad

I actually think that they are wrong on this account, but that's just my personal opinion of course. There is a flood of people getting into 3D-printing (I'm one of them), and those people need a proper CAD tool (at least those that want to design their own parts).

I think (but again, just what I think) that a fair share of those people would like to pay some money for a bit more than the current free plan offers, and I think that would be well deserved money for Onshape. It would still not be enough to satisfy the professional users, so those would still choose the pro plan (which is reasonably priced, just not for a hobbyist).

So yeah, I think Onshape is missing out on some easy money here.  :-)

_Ðave_

@Onshape I suppose I should be more specific in my request of clarity on this issue if I expect a reply..

 I wish to subscribe to Onshape professional. But I have 6 other employees in the company that need to access my documents 2 managers 1 engineer and 3 set-up machinist. They will likely be doing there own modifications to my documents edits, add other documents etc. My question is am I collaborating or exploiting the system.

_Dave_ 

michał_1

That's absolutely fair use, abusive would be, if you would have 6 other designers modeling on a free accounts, using single pro account as a host.

Darren_A_Henry

_Dave_ said:

@Onshape I suppose I should be more specific in my request of clarity on this issue if I expect a reply..

 I wish to subscribe to Onshape professional. But I have 6 other employees in the company that need to access my documents 2 managers 1 engineer and 3 set-up machinist. They will likely be doing there own modifications to my documents edits, add other documents etc. My question is am I collaborating or exploiting the system.

_Dave_ 

Hi Dave

I consider what you describe as fair usage.  You are referring to what we call Light Duty pro's.  People that access data more than author the content.  

Darren

_Ðave_

Thanks Darren

 I appreciate your input on this. From your reply I feel that i should elaborate a bit more for clarity of my intent.

My function at the company is to provide programming for our various cnc machining centers.

 I would like to start a document, create or import a part model, create a stock model and position it all in the proper orientation for machining.
Then I would want my in house engineer or contract engineer to design the required fixturing to hold the work on the specific machine.
 Now I can export the completed assembly to my cam software and continue my programming.

 It's my assumption that this is fair use because the engineers are collaborating with me and my document to achieve my ultimate goal of creating a program for a cnc machining center.

Thanks for the Advise
_Dave_

3dcad

Now that we get into this, what about following situation:

Owner of company buys 1 pro plan for himself, but uses it only for creating documents for new projects and shares to 1 designer who is on free plan. Most of design work is done with free plan but pro plan is mainly for inspecting, archiving and administrating models.

So there is only one 'full time modeler' but owner want's to be the one who has access and control of documents.

@darren_henry How would you see this kind of situation?

I ask because this would pretty often be the case in small companies where owner likes to keep things under control and participate in design work but not as full time modeler. 

_Ðave_

@3dcad I agree that this would be a common request and I agree with you that this is fair use but would like to hear it from the horses mouth also.

_Dave_

john_smith077

Strange. It seems that the only way to purge is to copy workspace with the workspace open.

I just tried to do a purge by copying a document that had grown to 13MB. So I went: My documents ==> Gear ==> Copy workspace
But the resulting file was still 13MB even after I waited for 10 minutes.  

Then tried Opening the document ==> click the three bars (top left) ==> Copy workspace
This time the resulting file was back down to 1MB.  Phew!