Improvements to Onshape - February 26, 2015

lougallo

This week is a big release for Onshape.  The past few weeks we have been working on a number of improvements in order to be ready for Beta.  Updates to Organizations, sketch and feature additions as well as UI around our new account plans made the cut.  So go and get your hands dirty and let us know what you think!
Highlights include:

Sketching:

1. Add sketch references and dimensions to planes.
   
   
   
   
2. Dimension extension lines have been added to dimensions .(when not between leaders)
   
   
   
   
3. Angular dimensions can be defined to any quadrant.
   
   
   
   
4. New pierce constraint
   
   
   

Features:

1. New Mirror faces option (similar to linear/circular patterns)
   
   
   
   
2. Boolean subtract with offset option
   
   
   

Organizations:

1. Documents owned by an organization can now be shared with another organization
2. Organizations can be deleted by an Admin
3. User list has page navigation (larger than 20 users)
   
   
   
   
4. Owned by column in Organization filters

Layout/Interface:

1. Removed icons from filter list on Documents page.  (that we added last push)
2. New "Forum username" field in Onshape profile page (used for Single-Sign On)
   
   
   
   
3. Help icon in all dialogs
   
   
   
4. Public badge in Documents pages
   
   
   

Performance/General:

1. Thumbnail generation performance has been improved
2. DWG/DXF output of sketches/planes will now respect Onshape's document units

Please give them a try and let us know what you think.  More to come shortly and we are heads down on the next build!  ~Lou

traveler_hauptman

Nice!

An idea... I find that I spend a bit of time with some new capabilities figuring out how corner cases are handled or how the capability behaves in complex situations.

For instance, with the face mirror you (necessarily) use a simple example to illustrate what it's doing, and when you update the help documentation you will use a similarly clean example (as you should). But it would be helpful to me, maybe others, to have at the end of the help a few ugly examples so we can get our head around how we can use it and what the limitations are.

Or maybe a description (in the help) or illustration of the physics/rules that faces have vs features is needed? I'm not sure...

(For the record I did experiment a bit to figure what I can and can't do. It's reinforcing that I like thinking in terms of features much more than faces and I'm really looking forward to the time when all these low level geometry operations get consolidated into feature operations.)

brucebartlett

Just completed a part from 1 sketch using a coincidence to face constraint, got me a bit excited. Last night I was considering using a Boolean of 2 parts to create this geometry, today I jumped on click, click and done. Now I need a symmetric constraint for the line constraining the chamfer and the ability to link dimensions but we're getting there. 

Great work, keep them coming.

caradon

Very nice updates for general productivity improvement!
I hope ellipses are coming soon. My colleague has been slashing at me for Onshape's lack of an ellipse tool. So, please relieve me.

Dries

pete_yodis

Wow. The Boolean with offset function looks really slick. Not having to select all the faces to apply to the whole action is really nice. Awesome stuff. I love the weekly updates. So efficient.

brucebartlett

Pete Yodis said:

Wow. The Boolean with offset function looks really slick. Not having to select all the faces to apply to the whole action is really nice. Awesome stuff. I love the weekly updates. So efficient.

Very impressive, adding the select faces to offset really makes this a useful tool with no downstream features needed  

julian_leland

Maybe it's just me, but right now I'm basking in being able to actually dimension the angle I want to. No more subtraction, thank goodness...

pete_yodis

Julian_Leland said:

Maybe it's just me, but right now I'm basking in being able to actually dimension the angle I want to. No more subtraction, thank goodness...

So true.

billy2

I would like to add one to this list of improvements.

Spin box increment now works!



If you highlight the dimension and spin, the number updates nicely. Sometimes its the small things that matter the most.



Ok, so I take this all back.

So it's still f'd-up. Increment this and it updates by .01mm which is too fine to be useful. In the previous dialog it was updating by .1mm which was nice. You don't have control over the increment value and therefore spinbox increment is useless.

How about?
Look at the dimension resolution setting the spinbox increment accordingly.

Increments by .1mm:



increments by .01mm:


increments by 1mm:

fastwayjim

Boolean with Offset FTMFW!

lougallo

Today we turned on our subscription plans.  For those of you who have prepaid, someone should have reached out to you and your Documents page should appear no different that it used to.  Everyone else will see the below interface.  The Free plan will have the ability to access up to 5 private, active documents at one time.  



Active/Inactive:

1. You have 5 tokens you can place on any of your private or "Shared with me" documents.
2. Public documents do not count against your Active documents
3. You may create as many documents as you like (once you are at your 5 active documents limit, new documents are created as private and inactive)
   
   

You can toggle active/inactive in the gear menu or by clicking on the blue/grey token on the left of each document name.  You can remove all of the active/inactive interface by upgrading to the Professional plan by clicking the link at the top of the Documents page.  If you do have a Professional plan, you can view your billing information in the Manage account menu under your name in the upper right.  Feedback is always welcome.  ~Lou

fastwayjim

Looks/works great guys!

caradon

Indeed, works smoothly!

Dries

andrew_troup

The way you chose to demonstrate the difference between a pierce and a coincident relation was elegant.

I wish I had thought of such a good way two decades ago when a young engineer suggested to me that "pierce" was redundant, because (to his limited appreciation) it achieved nothing which "coincident" did not.

Those of us who instantly seize the value of high level tools are sometimes at a loss when faced with someone whose instinct is to dismiss whatever they do not understand. Being a quick study does not always equip a person to be a great teacher.

It's great to have a repertoire of compelling and succinct demonstrations to reveal to dogmatic or blinkered neophytes exactly what it is that they are missing. 

lougallo

@Andrew_Troup Thanks!  Was hoping the demos are clear.  

moengineering

Hello @LouGallo and the whole @onshape team,

great and really impressive work!


Best regards
Martin