Improvements to Onshape - August 2nd, 2016

cody_armstrong

We have a huge update for you this time!  There is a lot to cover so let's get started.

1. NEW Assembly linear pattern - You can now create linear patterns of parts and assemblies at the assembly level.
   
   https://youtu.be/rie4aD4ZjGU
   
   
   
2. NEW Assembly circular pattern - You can now create circular patterns of parts and assemblies at the assembly level.
   
   https://youtu.be/shueJTRKSeo
   
   
   
3. NEW Parallel mate - New parallel mate allows you to keep two mate connectors parallel, while still allowing the freedom to move in any linear direction as well as a rotational degree of freedom about the Z axis.
   
   https://youtu.be/1wdIiPXlflo
   
   
4. IMPROVED Section view end caps - Section view end caps are now visible. This makes the edges of section views clearer.
   
   
5. NEW Labels - Labels can now be created to help organize and search for Documents.
   
   https://youtu.be/eVB_OhUipVI
   
   
   
6. IMPROVED Isolate - The isolate command now has options to expand on the selected entity. The connectivity option will choose parts and sub-assemblies mated to the selection. The distance option will choose parts and sub-assemblies based on their distance from the selected entity. A slider allows you to further expand the level of connectivity/distance.
   
   
   
7. IMPROVED Jogged section view in Drawings - The section view command now supports jogged section views (sometimes referred to as offset section views).  Simply click a point for each jog in the section view line.
   
   https://youtu.be/wuzrw_mPw8A
   
   
   
8. IMPROVED Change sheet size in Drawings - You will find a new "Properties" option in the sheets flyout menu.  Here you can change the size of your drawing.
   
   
   
9. IMPROVED Feet and inch units in Drawings - Feet and inches are now an option when changing units in the drawing properties flyout menu.
   
   
   
10. IMPROVED  Collaborator cursor in FeatureScript - When collaborating in a Feature Studio, you will now see your collaborator's cursor in real-time.
    
    https://youtu.be/POZqeD488Jg
    
    Honorable Mentions:
    
    •   You can now export parts and assemblies to Collada format. Simply right click the part or assembly (or tab), choose "Export", then choose the Collada format.
    • There is now a setting to control the model space background color of imported DXF's and DWG's.  You will find it under your account settings, "Preferences."
      

      

    • F (free state) and T (tangent plane) icons have been added to the geometric tolerance command.
      
      
      
      
    • When importing into a Feature Studio, the Document name now appears instead of the ID.  This makes it easier to understand in the code what Documents have been imported. 
      
      
      
      
    • A new startTimer and printTimer function have been added to FeatureScript, making it easier to debug and optimize for performance.
      
      
      
      
    Please take a moment to try out these new features and improvements and let us know what you think!
    
    
    Remember: The updates listed here are now live for all users when creating new documents and over the next few days these features will also be available in documents created before the date of this update.
    

ilya_baran

A couple more improvements of interest to FeatureScript users I thought I'd mention:

• Updating for custom features in your toolbar -- when a feature author creates a new version of a feature in your toolbar, you will now be able to right-click on the feature button and update it to the new version
• opFitSpline can now take an optional startDerivative and endDerivative
• You can now suppress warnings inside a try statement or expression by using "try silent" instead of "try" -- use with caution because that may put you in a difficult-to-debug situation
• Maps, arrays, and enum declarations now allow trailing commas

fastwayjim

Assemblies, Drawings, and Featurescript. Oh my!

owen_sparks

Nice update Cody but now you've got to do another webinar!  You couldn't have released it a couple of hours earlier.... 

3dexter

Thank you for improvement in section view!

I'd love to also see two improvements below:

• View axis.

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• Transparent opposite side.

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john_96

Great improvements. Would love to see fractional inches added to drawings and the ability to edit individual dimension formats within a drawing. Example fractional inches for dimensions less than 10' and feet-inches format for dimensions greater than 10' 

shashank_aarya

Great improvements! wow 

viru

As always with the updates, this is a great one.  thanks to the Onshape team.

Keep up the awesome work!

owen_sparks

Just started playing with the labels.
Initially I was resistant, we've had folders for years what do we need tags for? But I was so very wrong.  Labels look like folders, if that's what you want, but can also show the same document as if it were in multiple places at once.  Did I save that widget in tools, 3d printing or JST connectors? Answer - all of them, at the same time, without duplicates. Chances of finding it in a year's time = high.  Hurrah, I am a convert, where can I buy the t-shirt?

One request - There will be a bit of pain to initially plough through our existing docs to add tags.  It'd be nice to be able to filter documents that don't yet have tag(s) set to make them easier to find and clean up.

Not sure about sub folder like behavior.  Being able to filter for multiple tags at the same time will be needed.  Hmmm.
Owen S

PeteYodis

john_96 said:

Great improvements. Would love to see fractional inches added to drawings and the ability to edit individual dimension formats within a drawing. Example fractional inches for dimensions less than 10' and feet-inches format for dimensions greater than 10' 

We hear you loud and clear John.  Thank you for the feedback.

ml

cool! and, which improvements on the dxf import?
randomly i tried some dxf imports which resulted last week in a non closed outline, today they are closed....
very cool! but it would be helpful to know some details what has been fixed and where we can stop for searching and trying handmade workarounds...

emmett_weeks

@ml, those improvements that you noticed are actually a general sketching improvement. We changed the way that we use Parasolid to imprint curves to form sketch regions since they introduced a new api and deprecated their old one. It was a behind the scene change, so it didn't get a 'whats new' mention. We still use the old one for some older sketches that would change if we used the new one.

ml

thx @emmett_weeks for clarifying.
important for us to know is that arc-line constructions from dxf are closed now and this feature should be stay for the future. helps us a lot and gives stabiltiy

3dcad

Hooray for tags in document list! Eternal scroolliiiing is finally history - THANK YOU Onshape for that!!
I'm sure you have parent/child tag handler in mind already?

Assembly patterns, WOW - I wan't to test them asap.. I'm really curios how it works with BOM / can you edit one of parts created with pattern etc..

This update is huge step towards reaching the industry standards, great work Onshape team!

 

_Ðave_

Labels are an improvement over what I've be accomplishing with teams only because it's much easier to create a label than a team. I've converted my teams into labels and quite honestly the list of labels is already long and will so be too long to reasonable navigate. I understand that I can search the labels but I would absolutely like to see sub-labels. Keep up the good work.

brian_jordan

I like labels, particularly since I discovered that multiple labels can be attached to individual documents. It would be even nicer and improve readability if the labels could be displayed in a user defined order rather than alphabetical order.

brucebartlett

Great List of improvements. The features are starting to fill out now keep up the good work. Great to see more functionality coming into drawings, jogged section veiw will come in handy. The new assembly features are great too, patterns and also the new parallel mate, I will now be interested to see if we also get a assembly mirror feature. 

I may have missed this on a earlier update but now I can edit names from the search tool which is really handy and intuitive.  

dave_cowden

Woo hoo! Thanks for performance timers! And silent try! Huge improvements from FS dev viewpoint!

axel_sodeik

The assembly pattern is a very nice feature as long as you use it with a desktop browser. If you try to open such a document with the android app, you get an error message, that the model contains assembly patterns, which are not supported with my android onshape version.

There is no update available at the play store. The current version is:

1.50.4306 which is dated 1. Aug. 2016

I hope we'll get an update soon or at least an information when the next android version will be available.