Ridiculous design decisions with your Configurations

duncan_ledesma

I have trouble understanding why when suppressing an entire folder with Configurations it adds them one by one without any way to:

1. Group features (like the folder they were originally in) within the table,
2. Distinguish sibling folders, and thus among the items therein.

Also, with checkbox, why is the unchecked row filled with checked values? If the table of two rows is a table of two discrete values, then the items of either row ALL need to follow the rules of that row; you aren't ticking checkboxes in each item however you want since that would defeat the entire purpose. If you want discrete values, that's what List is for, not Checkbox.

I also realized that Derived does not include variables. Someone had to write a featurescript called SuperDerive to enable this.

I discovered Onshape from the advertisement campaigns and I'm interested in using Onshape professionally in the future, but clunky issues like these are making me think otherwise. If you could point me to the right direction, I'll gladly appreciate it. Otherwise, I'll post any solutions I find below.

Developers, there should be no good reason as to why these particular issues persist. They are terrible design decisions. So, please patch them because I can't. Forget voting. Adding non-existent organization within Configurations is obviously so useful it is non-negotiable.

NeilCooke

Onshape deploys features as they become available with usable capabilities. If we waited to make everything perfect we would resort to annual releases 😀 rest assured we are aware of this limitation and it will be addessed in the future.

jelte_steur_info

@duncan_ledesma :
This solution will help:
https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/123648#Comment_123648
I even wrote a custom feature to enable it:

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/29640/new-custom-feature-boolean-variable

this feature is built in the part studio that i used in the first example.

eric_pesty

@duncan_ledesma

Check out this quick video talking about this (and also any other videos on that channel for lots of great and practical Onshape tips), while we wait for expanded functionality, there is a fairly simple workaround…:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9h0623L_yQ

ilya_baran

@duncan_ledesma

Your criticism is mostly valid — we do need better folder handling in config tables and suppression handling for boolean inputs can be improved.

I was a little amused because the someone who wrote SuperDerive is the same person who made many of the internal design decisions about how variables work in Onshape. The reason is that deriving variables is a clunky way of sharing design intent between part studios. A cleaner approach 99% of the time is using variable studios, which is what I would recommend now. However, they didn't exist for many years and SuperDerive was written as a stopgap. Today SuperDerive is essentially obsolete.

EvanReese

Just wanna say that I love the courteous replies coming from the incredibly smart people who have dedicated the past 13+ years of their life building Onshape from scratch and who's decisions have just been called "ridiculous" and "terrible". The company culture is on point.

MichaelPascoe

I second that @EvanReese. The Onshape team is unparalleled! 😎

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eric_pesty

Also worth pointing out that Onhsape is always in a state of flux due to frequent releases and this leads to features that can appear "half baked" and may leave a worst first impression than if the feature wasn't even there!

However, the foundation of how Onshape works is just so much better that the little oddities are completely irrelevant when it comes to getting things done.

This has been the case for years: we started switching to Onshape from Solidworks and had zero regrets from day one even though there were many more things requiring workarounds than there are today.