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you should only have read the first sentence in each of the two posts just before you which summarize the situation:
Those of us showing our disappointment in this thread are not asking Onshape to be free, we're just asking for some middle ground to be used for our non-commercial use while still retaining some privacy for stuff that we for some reason do not want to be accessible to anyone. by øyvind_kaurstad
Reading through your post reminds me also of a kid:
Well said @coleman I agree with you that the value of Onshape is more than we pay for.
That is what makes me a bit concerned. I might need 1-2 licences more than I have now - I might even be able to justify them with a slight grow in my business. But when I have bunch of licenses and I invest into training employees and tie Onshape into our day to day work - if they then announce that: dear coleman and 3dcad, you were right this is too good to be true. Pro license will be cut to 5 private documents but feel free to upgrade into enterprice level at $3000 per seat per year - then I'm screwed. I can accept extra cost for sheetmetal since I wouldn't buy it, but if they bake everything into pro account they might think that it is reasonable to adjust prices higher from time to time.
I would really like to have higher level promise that I can count on current pricing model on pro plan.
For you guys asking for middle tier, it's $1200 per year for single seat including licence to unlimited amount of devices.
To be honest it's still your (and my) best shot in the market. For me this is middle tier since I never could afford solid works as I need to have at least 3 computers in use without any license hassle. Geomagic seems to be forgotten product without any current updates. conFusion - well
If you have any kind of contract design business, I'm sure it's only few deals to justify $1200 yearly cost. But if you have similar situation as I had when I found Alibre, those days I needed cad only few days per month - that was hard to justify. If I had that situation now, I would ask for daily payment plan for pro account rather than middle tier with data restrictions.
I believe Onshape is missing out on quite a bit of revenue by choosing this path, and in the end I guess that means you Pro guys will suffer more (prices will have to go up), so instead of mocking us hobbyists that want to pay for non-commercial use at a level below Pro (because we aren't professionals, my first foray into MCAD was Onshape), you should instead support us.
This allows for both Metric and inch design documents (or both the same if you never need the other unit system). I do this to some degree by keeping 2 "sandbox" workspaces for trying things out or practicing, but make new workspaces for projects. Onshape could even pre-name the workspaces and make it so they cannot be renamed. Since you can organize workspaces into folders, you would have a lot of flexibility in keeping a few designs private. Shared documents from Pro users would still be view only. You could even limit copying part studios from shared private documents into the 2 free privates, but allow copying and pasting between the 2 private documents and your public documents.
Just my 2¢ for a compromise between an intermediate tier and free with a small amount of privacy.
Edit: would it be possible for Onshape to charge a one-time flat fee to create each of these private workspaces? Click on Create and select Paid Private if on the Free plan. Verify that is what you want and get charged. Maybe $10 a private document that you can use forever with the limitations stated above. Convert to Pro and the document's limits go away. Revert to Free and paid for documents remain private but become limited again. I would pay for one or two a year maybe.
Can you tell me why can't you design that stuff using public space?
I think 50% of companies could use free plan and public space without any actual harm. But companies are propably willing to pay for privacy.
Of course I'm supporting any low cost solution, if there was one I would immediately evaluate if that would fit to my needs too. But for some reason I can understand their choice, in the beginning I was actually amazed that who needs pro if you get 10 active docs without limits for free.
Maybe you could use your Onshape skills for some contract design and make it worth the price for you?
I'm not any sort of contract designer. I design & manufacture and sell the products. So basically I'm a maker?
Continuosly, I try to come up with new areas where I can benefit having world class cad in my hands. I save money by creating new factory layouts myself, I have even designed few simple material handling machines, I have modeled our warehouse to save the architect cost.. Just use your imagination and you can easily justify a single license cost.
In reality, for how I use it, even a sum of $20-30$ a month is too much, but hobbies cost money, and such an amount would be within the scope for me. The Pro plan is not.
And the changing of rules also worries me. If I were to continue using Onshape, I'd need to know that they would not enable searching for all public documents of a specific user. I've asked about this earlier in the thread, directly addressing @darren_henry and @cody_armstrong, but so far no response. I wouldn't be surprised if this is something they have in the pipeline, to further ensure that no one tries to maintain even a tiny sliver of privacy by obfuscating document names or other schemes as someone suggested earlier in this thread. The lack of any response is perhaps response good enough.
I pay $100 a month for Onshape for modeling and drafting. That's $1200 a year. Almost 25X the price.
I want to natively model in Onshape. I want to generate my cutter paths in Onshape. I want to collaborate in Onshape. I was excited to try the cloud concept.
I have never crashed in OnShape. The multiple servers and failover is incredible. Access everywhere (but the airplane is nice.) The ticketing system is awesome.
Unfortunetly, the CAD functionality itself is very very immature and I have 0 tolerance for the Agile buzz word.
I see features slowly coming in. At this point I am hoping that in 2017 I can at least make Onshape my primary collaborative tool. I think for 2017 I am still going to be modeling and machining from Fusion 360.
I think on the cloud platform side, Onshape has really brought the cloud concept to CAD. However I think they underestimated the work involved in the CAD side. There is much more to it than slapping some google document menus over parasolid engine.
Hopefully Onshape can hang in there for a couple more years and they can do a version 2 redesign of their interface. The way Onshape as a cloud service is put together is great. Very 2.0. But the way the CAD system is put together is less than current 1.0 systems.
I hope they step up. I'll continue to support them through 2017 with my $1200 a year and with trying to work through bugs and functionality that may need some work.
As I understand it, one can still create and edit public documents (correct me if I am wrong) therefore still representing the interests of the open-source designers and hobbyists. Another up-side is that we still have access to learn the program. We are not limited by a trial period of whatever number of days. One can learn to use and like OnShape before making purchase. I will most definitely be coming back for design if I don't mind sharing.
As someone who has opened several business and a wife who has done the same, I know that you can NEVER fully predict the costs of opening and maintaining the business. I do not begin to understand what the cost of something like this could be as I have never started something in programming and the like. One example of cost issues I can think of is abuse. Back in the day when I used Solidworks, many would ask someone to take their model and export it to .STL from their software so they could sell it on Shapeways. Running a business is often times impossible with theft like that and I could not personally steal from a company making me money....It's just WRONG.
With that said, I would definitely welcome an intermediate plan as there are obviously MANY user who do not design/develop full time and therefore cannot justify the $1,200 per year. Design start-ups can be HELL in the current CAD market (hence things like gofundme and kickstarter.) A move like this does not feel like a squeeze of any type. They may be not be getting the profits needed to maintain operations and if that happens, no one gets OnShape. I hope to see more membership options soon as I REALLY love the workflow of OnShape and would love to continue using it.
To those who are frustrated, I hear you loud and clear - and Onshape does too. If you look deep enough in this forum, you will see that much of today's functionality is a direct result of discussions just like this. Thus, by taking part in this forum, and in this conversation, you are helping to shape the future of Onshape. Even if you use other CAD tools alongside Onshape (I do), by joining in the conversation you are still adding value to the Onshape platform. As a pro user, I thank you for that value.
Also, a bit of advice for those who want to keep their designs private - Do your homework, look for prior art. If you truly have a novel idea, and you think it is worth real money, and you don't want anybody else to find out, you should go to a Intellectual Property lawyer right now, and file for a provisional patent. But be forewarned - this service is not free. Lawyers will cost about $300/hr. Even on the monthly plan, Onshape is only $0.17/hr.
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That doesn't mean I still would like to know whether Onshape will change the search options to include searching for all public documents by a given user. @jon_hirschtick, @darren_henry, @lougallo, @cody_armstrong : Do you hear me? Can we at least have an answer to this?
Yes, "search" will continuously improve.
If you are NOT comfortable with your data being public, Onshape's Free Plan is not a fit.
Thanks for the ride anyway, I'm really sorry to have to go, as this community is really nice and with a very good signal to noise ratio.
Maybe one private document, unlimited size. Unworkable for a larger enterprise or extensive use, but sufficient for either someone who only occasionally uses CAD, or maybe just want's to keep their design secret for the big reveal at an event. Would be either free (self declaration & policing of abuse) or for a nominal fee (could be something novel like $1 per a day for editing rights to your private document).
As a hobbyist I might not use it for a few months, then use it intensively for a week or two, so can't be paying hundreds of dollars just to keep a few prototypes under wraps. Then again, maybe I just need traditional CAD software.
I am a long term Solidworks user. I have designs that I have shared publicly, and have a speaker design thread on a DIY forum with over 0.5 million views. I recently registered with Onshape hoping I would be able to start a opensource project introducing many new users to parametric cad. I now find that I will not be able to keep my designs private until I am ready to release them to the public. I am all for open source collaboration but feel that the loss of any private documents will stifle the motivation for new users to learn a new CAD system. If a user can not secure any privacy or IP on anything that they draw in Onshape, without paying for a full priced subscription to secure access, then I think that they will be looking for another CAD system to learn.
I have been preaching for Onshape since your very first press release. I was a believer but now I just feel personally betrayed as though I just realized I have been following a false prophet this whole time.
At my day job we have multiple seats of SW under subscription. I could use SW works at home if I choose to but I am a maker at heart. I find it ironic that just two weeks ago I finally chose Onshape over Fusion360 as my platform of choice and now this. I had a couple of development projects I wanted to keep private but it looks like that is no longer an option.
It's SW subscription renewal time here at work and I have been debating between a 1 year or a 3 year renewal. I just made my decision, 3 years it is.
Onshape you are dead to me now.
I don't see a lot of large companies adopting this as they have a great deal of legacy data and lets face it working with native data and keeping the history tree or feature tree is a plus. So I see this as being initially adopted by smaller startups that don't want to put down $3K-10K to purchase a desktop software package .
The advantage that OS had was the PURE cloud environment. I liked the fact that I could use it anywhere with out any install. That advantage will likely be lost as well when ProjectLeopard is out of beta. At this point the product that OS refuses to acknowledge as a competitor is probably the better deal. I mean 2 immature CAD products one contains Rendering/FEA/3axis CAM/Modeling/Drawings for $300-$1200 and one has Modeling and Drawings for $1200.
So the race is one. Will it be easier to bring an mature CAD system into the browser? Or will it be easier to bring a new CAD system to maturity.
IMHO I've always experience scaling down being much easier than scaling up. Apple scaled down OSX onto a phone, where other folks had to scale a phoneos into an operating system. Sikorsky scales a heavy lift helicopter down to a Blackhawk to beat Boeing who was trying to scale up.
Im not sure I've decided who is scaling up or down in this scenario.
First, I think all these complaints are unjustified. Starting with bait/betrayed stuff. While I do understand your disappointment, I don't agree with accusations following after.
@mischl is quoting an interview with @jon_hirschtick , please everyone read that article, because it's more than obvious that Onshape was focused on professional market since very beginning. David Lavin is asking Jon "It looks like with Onshape that you built a new CAD environment not for DIY customers, but for the big guys. Is your main target a corporate market, while personal usage of CAD with 3D printers is not a priority?", and Mr. Hirschtick responds "our Free Plan still offers an unprecedented solution for DIYers and makers" ,still after he start with "We built Onshape with a focus on professionals".
There never was a promise about how "free" will look like, except this one "I realized we never responded to your original post in this thread: what's our business plan, marketing and pricing roadmap. In summary: monthly fee. No upfront license. Market to pros. Also a free version for learning/eval/viewing/student/hobbyist users. Public data always free. What would you suggest as a monthly fee?". That's qoute from Mr. Hirschtick on this thread: https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/787
You should also be able to find couple of blog post about makers, hobbyist, kickstarter and open source projects, and you won't gonna find any claims about Free Plan.
Because of generous Free Plan whole system was vulnerable to abuse. First version of Free Plan was introduced in February 2015 (while pre-production stage). We had 5GB of storage and 5 active docs. That solution didn't make sense, you can read comments below the announcement: https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/338/introducing-onshapes-free-and-professional-plans/p1
With such plan they would failed to get any sales at all. Therefore three months later they disabled activating/deactivating option (just after launching Onshape Beta). Not much longer it took them to realise that it might be not enough. In August Free Plan was changed to 10 docs within 100MB (for private stuff). Can't recall if there was an announcement, but here's discussion from that time: https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/1026/what-will-be-the-upcoming-changes-to-the-onshape-free-plan/p1 . Look at the date of first post, community knew about upcomming change since June.
New limits did make me thinking about, what will happen if I exceed 100MB. Conclusion was sad, free users could run for years without getting paid subscription. I immediately wrote a post: https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/1730/murphys-law#latest . That didn't drag many attention... but in October Onshape reinforced limits on Free Plan: https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/1927/enforcement-of-free-plan-limits/p1
From my perspective it was still not enough, so I've bring "Host Account" argument (within same discussion). That discussion did endup for me with this @darren_henry statement "In this Forum thread it was pointed out that a business could exploit a loophole by purchasing only one Professional subscription. The scenario is a company that has several heavy users of Free Onshape that are working on professional sized Documents doled out by the one Pro account. I think everyone would agree at some level, this method of usage eventually becomes abusive to Onshape. This type of usage is easy to detect, and is not currently an issue, so we do not have plans to address it. I hope we do not need to."
All this happened while beta program. Almost year after Onshape commercial launch, they've found reasons to deal with abusive users ( as @3dcad have mentioned).
We could argue about how that last change was done, but I think new Free Plan is very generous, and with Pro Plan builds consistent, seamless system.
Second thing are prospects for new Mid-tier Plan. That would make sense only if it would not interrupt with whole system.
Then, how does it look now? Onshape have troubles with computing storage limits. If that would be trivial task we wouldn't see "number of documents incorrect" posts in a first place. If it that could work like "I am quite sure, they have been able to fix this piece of code in the meantime and it runs smoothly" it would be solved already. That did not happen, even more we can have a fair bet that it's caused by how Onshape manage data. Developers are currently unable to provide folders for documents, since at least 2014: https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/11/folder-in-my-documents/p1
If Onshape would have Mid-tier Plan, it would be for a price of constant struggle. The struggle would also include dealing with customers complaints. Let's be honest unjustified complaints, also.
These are arguments in disfavor of mid plan. Maybe some pro arguments? Main argument is that low cost plan could lead to full license. Is it? If you're reading this discussion you have come across this statement "Marketing folks have no problem making promises or insinuations that they never plan (or are unable) to keep." That describes not just promises made by Onshape marketing, but also your promises. When you will finally monetize your side projects, you will reconsider CAD choice. It's even worst, you yet can't afford Pro Plan and you've already come to conclusion that $1200-1500 is too much for Onshape. How could they rely on such promises? They can't, Onshape need to prove its worth with or without mid/free plan. This argument (from Free to Pro) vanish as quick as your enthusiasm for Onshape has vanished. Your precious inventions are also irrelevant for Onshape success or failure. Especially if we would try to estimate how many of this projects will eventually be commercially available (fraction?). You need to be aware, that when no one's deny your urge, it doesn't make it yet a valid reason for others.
I like comment from @lonnie_1 . It's not a complaint, just opinion, and I do somehow agree with that. Onshape put itself in disfavor by targeting professional market, and rejecting startups as a first customers. I do agree on that. But @lonnie_1 also says "The advantage that OS had was the PURE cloud environment" and that's the key argument why I can't accept any of your reasons. When I heard about Onshape, first cloud cad, I was very excited. Somewhere in 2010 I was playing with Onlive, a game streaming service. Since that time I understand that future of all computation is in centralized computing (cloud computing). @lonnie_1 underestimates importance of that most significant switch that takes place here. Big Data followed by AI will change next decades. Future belongs to those who will accomodate that new environment first.
When I was reading about Onshape for the first time, I had clear picture of an aeroplane model. Not just any model, full assembly (up to a single rivet or thread) of an airliner. Model that can be edited simultaneously by whole teams. Realistic simulation with all details, simulation of everything. I know it will be possible soon (next decade?) and Onshape took that challenge. I cooled off when I learned that Onshape will use Parasolid kernel. I was rather thinking that they will try to build new one. One that would be designed to effectively consume growing resources. Kernel that would take advantage of new architecture, running without OS. Even less encouraging was fact that Onshape will not be streamed but displayed through WebGL. Nevertheless, I know that Onshape is a business project and it need to be commercially feasible. It need to laid some ground before it could progress.
I know about Project Leopard, but I'm an active member of Fusion 360 community and I don't believe it's the same opportunity. I believe that Onshape founders have same vision as I do. Decision to do everything in clouds is risky, but that's the only way. Decision to straighten Free Plan is also hard but necessary.
I keep my finges crossed for Onshape.
For all those mean and petty users who were granted free tool but didn't even give Onshape a credit of honesty...
Kind regards
projektowanieproduktow.wordpress.com
Disclaimer. This announcement wdoes not affect me I invested in a single pro license in my mind treating OS a bit like a kickstarter project I want to succeed.
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My first thought. Shit. They are out of cash. Maybe they need to sacrifice thousands of free accounts in the hopes to pressure hundreds of them to go pro. Counting on the fact that hundreds of them are in a little to deep to pull out.
If cash is the motivation then you are not going to see any compromise in the "middle ground" until there is a sustainable paying user base.
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My second thought. Can't calculate the document storage?
Calculating the size of your documents with versions and rollbacks and data referenced by multiple documents is a daughting PLM task. There are links to tables everywhere and back again in the database.
Calculating the number of documents? Like someone said above. That is a simple select statement.
Remember they are very experience folks here too. Folks that have been storing CAD in the database with revision and configuration since Ford's PDGS system in the mid 80s.