Welcome to the Onshape forum! Ask questions and join in the discussions about everything Onshape.
First time visiting? Here are some places to start:- Looking for a certain topic? Check out the categories filter or use Search (upper right).
- Need support? Ask a question to our Community Support category.
- Please submit support tickets for bugs but you can request improvements in the Product Feedback category.
- Be respectful, on topic and if you see a problem, Flag it.
If you would like to contact our Community Manager personally, feel free to send a private message or an email.
Designing on Onshape Mobile – Our Experience + Air Engine Tutorial Series
hanen_bdioui58
Member Posts: 3 PRO
Hey Onshape community 👋
My partner Ridvan Polat and I recently tried something a little different: we designed an entire air engine, from sketches to assembly and technical drawings using only the tablet version of Onshape. And we have to say: it was way smoother than we expected.
We love working with traditional CAD tools, but using a tablet brought some surprisingly nice advantages:
- Instead of a right-click, you just tap with two fingers, it feels natural and keeps you in sketch mode without messing around with menus.
- When sketching, the Position Selector feature was a game changer: you drag with the pen and snap exactly where you want (origin, align with other geometry, etc.). No fiddling with coordinates or guesswork.
- Zooming, panning, rotating, all super intuitive with touch gestures: pinch to zoom, two-finger drag to pan, swipe to rotate. Feels more like sculpting than CAD in some ways.
- To avoid accidentally rotating your part while moving around, View Lock comes in clutch. Especially useful when you are zooming in tight areas or working on fine details.
- And selecting multiple sketch entities? You don’t need a keyboard’s Ctrl. Just tap multiple items with the pen (or double-tap empty space to cancel) — simple and fast.
- The selection box as you drag with two fingers in hold-mode behaves kind of how you’d expect on desktop CAD. Drawing blue or yellow selection boxes is straightforward.
We decided to document everything, including how we set up sketches, how the mobile gestures work in different phases (sketch, extrude, assembly), and how it impacts our design flow.
👉 If you’re curious ⛄️, especially if you sometimes find yourself away from a desktop but still want to work — check out the full write-up here:
https://blog.championxperience.com/why-i-like-designing-the-air-engine-on-onshape-mobile/
We’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you prefer tablet design? Have you tried Onshape mobile for complex parts? What worked (or didn’t) for you?
Looking forward to reading your experiences 😊