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Improvements to Onshape - January 9th, 2026
Roy_Mutalik
Member, Onshape Employees Posts: 40 
Happy New Year, Onshape community!
Last year brought 17 new Onshape releases, with countless new features and improvements. We hope you have found them beneficial to your designs and workflows every day. But now is hardly the time to reflect on what we have accomplished together - instead, we are excited to start off the year strong with some new features in our first release of 2026!
SKETCH SLOTS - CLOSED CURVES
The sketch Slot tool now supports the creation of slots based on selecting a closed curve.
As a note, it is possible to configure fields to extract different table values depending on your Onshape configuration. To further understand the depth of this functionality, we encourage you to review the help documentation.
NOTE: While enabled in Onshape at this release, this improvement will not be functional in your environment until an update to Arena is completed. Currently, that update is scheduled to be complete on or before January 11th, 2026.
WORKHOLDING
CAM Studio now allows workholding selection at the job level. This means users can assign and manage specific workholding elements for each job, so simulations display only the relevant fixtures. This improves simulation accuracy and streamlines the manufacturing setup.
Last year brought 17 new Onshape releases, with countless new features and improvements. We hope you have found them beneficial to your designs and workflows every day. But now is hardly the time to reflect on what we have accomplished together - instead, we are excited to start off the year strong with some new features in our first release of 2026!
PART STUDIO IMPROVEMENTS
REVOLVE FEATURE END CONDITIONS
Onshape has introduced new end conditions for Revolve features that provide more flexible ways to define how revolve operations terminate. The new options include Up to Next (terminates when intersecting with existing geometry), Up to Part (terminates into a specified part or body), Up to Vertex (terminates at any selected point), and Up to Face (terminates at any specified face). These enhancements streamline the design process by removing the need to manually calculate angles or clean up geometry after creating revolve features.SKETCH DIALOG REMEMBERS ON/OFF STATE
In the sketch dialog, the Show constraints, Show expressions, and Show errors checkbox on/off state now persists. The state of these settings is remembered on a per user basis across all documents and sessions, and is maintained everywhere in Onshape until changed. This includes both editing old sketches and creating new ones. The Disable imprinting checkbox state persists only when creating a new sketch.SKETCH SLOTS - CLOSED CURVES
The sketch Slot tool now supports the creation of slots based on selecting a closed curve.CONNECTION ANALYSIS TOOL
A new Connection analysis tool allows you to quickly evaluate the connection type of two surfaces. It displays G0 (connection), G1 (tangency), and G2 (curvature continuity), with the option to prescribe a tolerance value for G1 and G2 types.ASSEMBLY IMPROVEMENTS
LINK PART STUDIO CONTEXT TO ASSEMBLY NAMED POSITIONS
You can now set an Part studio's assembly context to follow one of the assembly’s Named positions. By linking a context to a Named position, Onshape only presents the option to update the Part studio's context when the assembly’s Named position has changed. You may link and unlink a context freely as required, allowing for even clearer control of multiple contexts, even in an assembly with complex motion.MIRRORED SHEET METAL FLAT PATTERN VIEW
When creating derived, or opposite hand versions of sheet metal parts using Assembly mirror, Onshape now automatically provides the flat pattern for those parts. This eliminates the need to reference the original reference part's flat pattern for manufacturing purposes.GENERAL IMPROVEMENTS
CONFIGURATION VISIBILITY - ALWAYS SHOW
A new option makes it easier to always show a configuration input, regardless of any other applied Configuration visibility conditions.VARIABLE TABLE IMPORT FROM CSV
You can now create or update an Onshape Variable table from an external CSV file.As a note, it is possible to configure fields to extract different table values depending on your Onshape configuration. To further understand the depth of this functionality, we encourage you to review the help documentation.
LEVEL OF DETAIL GRAPHICS IMPROVEMENT - TRANSPARENCY
Just a few releases ago, we introduced a graphical level of detail improvement when zooming in on complex designs. This load-on-demand graphics behavior is now implemented for parts with transparency.ONSHAPE-ARENA CONNECTION
AUTOMATIC CREATION OF SHEET METAL DXF ON RELEASE SYNC
When a sync operation occurs at the creation of a release, Onshape now automatically generates a DXF of the flat pattern for any Sheet metal parts contained in the release candidate. The DXF file(s) are displayed in the Files view in Arena after being synced.NOTE: While enabled in Onshape at this release, this improvement will not be functional in your environment until an update to Arena is completed. Currently, that update is scheduled to be complete on or before January 11th, 2026.
CAM STUDIO IMPROVEMENTS
ADAPTIVE CUTTING OPTIONS
Adaptive cutting options are now available for 2D roughing, 3D roughing, and flatlands in all versions of Onshape CAM Studio. These strategies maintain a constant chip load, which improves machining accuracy, reduces cycle times, and results in smoother toolpaths.WORKPLANES AND DATUMS
Onshape CAM Studio now supports work planes and datums for all users, enabling the definition and management of custom coordinate systems within CAM projects. This update improves setup efficiency and precision.DATUM OVERRIDES
CAM Studio has introduced a new datum overrides feature that gives users complete control over assigning work coordinate system identifiers. This enhancement allows users to apply unique identifiers to each setup or work plane they create, providing greater flexibility and organization in their CAM workflows.SHIFT WORK COORDINATE SYSTEM
You can now manually shift a work coordinate system location using X, Y, and Z values. If a user needs to assign a work coordinate system on a specific feature or a specific location, users can measure and apply those values.WORKHOLDING
CAM Studio now allows workholding selection at the job level. This means users can assign and manage specific workholding elements for each job, so simulations display only the relevant fixtures. This improves simulation accuracy and streamlines the manufacturing setup.TOOL HAND
Onshape CAM now automatically sets the spindle direction for milling, drilling, and tapping operations based on the tool hand. For tapping tools, thread direction is linked to the tool hand. These changes ensure consistent NC output and simplify setup.Please take a moment to try out these new features and improvements and leave your comments below. For a detailed list of all the changes in this update, please see the changelog.
Remember: The updates listed here are now live for all users when creating new Documents. Over the next few days, these features will also be available in Documents created before this update. Mobile app interface updates occur via the Apple App store or Google Play store and happen in the days following the update.
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Comments
Sketch Options are sticky, very nice! I've been waiting for that one a long time.
Linking in-context to positions will also come in handy
it looks like disable imprinting dose not honor the last setting on a new sketch. It only remembers what was set for the current sketch.
Can this be fixed to be remembered on new sketches like the video stated?
Nice updates! The Revolve end conditions, and sketch slot improvements are outstanding.
The Onsherpa | Reach peak Onshape productivity
www.theonsherpa.com
Ty for the quality of life improvements team, this is fantastic!
More support for external files like CSV is exciting. Leads to better automation possibilities.
Speaking of data formats, would love see more syncing options to natively pull or push data from external sources like a company website or google sheets. Since Onshape is already cloud, would be insanely cool to be able to embed your model directly into your own site for marketing purposes or even configurations directly from Onshape instead of 3rd party apps. Current configurators require some heavy bottle-necks since they have to translate the models first instead of embedding a configuration view of your model directly.
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3d adaptive cutting is huge for the CAM tool. If I were forced to choose just one machining operation to use for the rest of my life and couldn't use any others that's the one I'd choose, and my workflow would probably not change much.
Auto spindle direction is also a great add as well. I used to work with someone that insisted on making more work for themselves and setting the direction of every toolpath themselves in our old software instead of baking everything into the tool definition. Our tooling costs and scrap rates mysteriously went way down after that guy moved on.
Derek Van Allen | Engineering Consultant | MeddlerI'm fine getting some Christmas presents after the fact if they're this good.
I've wanted several of these for a long time: revolve end conditions, sketch settings remembered, connection analysis, and contexts connected to named positions. The CSV import looks like it will enable a lot of useful things.
Simon Gatrall | Product Development Specialist | Open For Work
I'll call attention to one more item from the changelog for heavy FeatureScript authors. The performance panel now tells you how many modules you're importing in a Part Studio or a Feature Studio. People writing massive FS libraries have run into performance issues with too many modules being imported (typically via many different versions of std being referenced) so now you can at least see how much you're bringing in and how imports affect the module count.
Nice.
Reading through the change log some more, I see a couple things that sound very good to me:
Does this mean that if I move a part studio out of a document which is currently tied to a live reference of a variable studio, it will automatically suggest versioning the variable studio reference? Similarly for derived references?
Does this mean that users with multiple documents open won't end up doing more that 24 hours of work in a day?
Simon Gatrall | Product Development Specialist | Open For Work
Happy to see CAM studio improvements! I anxiously await getting to use them (currently still missing the post-processor option for our machine) but I'll be patient. Adaptive patterns are excellent.
"Sketch settings remembers on/off state"… meaning Disable imprinting can be turned on by default?!?
Ramon Yip | glassboard.com
The doc needs to be upgraded for this to work.
ok, it does work in a new document. It threw me for a loop since it was partially working. I figured the document was updated since I made in a few hours ago
@ilya_baran you mean to tell me that import common.fs plus everything including the kitchen sink isn't good practice? I'm shocked.
Combing the diffs like usual I see even more sheet metal loft support poking through the functions but maybe even more exciting I spy this little guy hanging out there in V2843
More mesh to surface workflows coming?
Derek Van Allen | Engineering Consultant | Meddler@Derek_Van_Allen_BD
Actually, importing common.fs is likely to result in better performance than importing 20 individual modules that it brings in (because we do some precomputation around common.fs). It's just that importing many different versions of common.fs can cause issues.
Regarding version creation; previously we not used to create a new version in target document in some scenario (when target is an existing document and we are not moving the referenced tabs). That used to create some issue for future reference updates. We addressed that case here by creating new version in the target document.
w.r.t. variable studio tab, it should not be any different behavior. But if you are aware of any issue with variable studio tab, please let us know.
Oh. I was hoping that moving a tab that was referencing other tabs would have an option to change the reference (derive feature or variable table reference) to a version. Right now, it's too easy to accidentally move too many tabs from one document to another.
Simon Gatrall | Product Development Specialist | Open For Work
Named position in context linking is nice.
Continuity check tool looks great looking forward to uses this more.
Nice release
Really like the named position in context linking. Would be even better if the context updated automatically for linked named positions since it's now separate. Overall great release
@Support
Could it be a strange behaviour has been introduced with the section view?
Until now, we could create a section view with two and turn it off with one command.
Now, I have to acknowledge the section view definition two times, and if I go to the view menu to turn it off, instead of just turning it off, it gets me to the edit section view window once again, where I have to click the red cross in order to finally turn section off and close the edit window. It makes no difference if I use "Turn Section View Off" or "Edit Section View" menu command. That's annoying and I see no advantage either.
I guess that is just not working as designed here.
Great new features for sure , again OnShape is always ahead of the pack , one question all those new features are for all OnShape or only the PRO version ? sorry but not always obvious on wich version they are for ( unless I did not read properly ! )
Yes, everything apart from Arena and CAM
What a treat, all is great, but for me the best are Mirror sheet metal and sketch sticky options. Thank you so much
I had a little play with named positions, driving in context design. Works beautifully. @okechukwu_victor I can see why you'd want part studio geometry to update automatically from assembly named positions, but this can sometimes be confusing, and it's nice to be asked first.
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/7339866cad03206895078259/w/cf6b4559aac8cc58173d5f40/e/8ad246e8f5c7d7349cb03bd0
Also love the improvements to revolve and sketch slot features. Thanks for a great New Year's update!