Onshape Drawings announced today

devon_sowell

Good news, are they available yet? Looked, I couldn't find the Drawing function, thanks.

http://gfxspeak.com/2015/04/16/graeberts-technology-drafting/

3dcad

"The OnShape Drawings module is still under development."

lougallo

@Devon_Sowell our partnership was announced... not our product.  We have some work to do before we will be ready to get it into the beta but hopefully this announcement will show how serious and dedicated we are to Drawings.

devon_sowell

Thanks for the info @LouGallo

emagdalenaC2i

That's really good news

I can't wait to see the Onshape API and the Xenon API

fastwayjim

So... am I the only one who completely underestimates the amount of work it *apparently* takes to "do drawings." I honestly thought you guys could throw it together pretty easily by yourselves. In my head, I'm thinking, "Come on, it's only 2D!" 

I obviously have no clue how this stuff works...

caradon

FastwayJim said:

So... am I the only one who completely underestimates the amount of work it *apparently* takes to "do drawings." I honestly thought you guys could throw it together pretty easily by yourselves. In my head, I'm thinking, "Come on, it's only 2D!" 

I obviously have no clue how this stuff works...

Given the many frustrations a designer can have with drafting modules in various CAD software, I'm sure it takes a lot of effort to make the experience for end users butter smooth. 

Dries

pete_yodis

Hey, why re-invent the wheel if Graebert is already doing it well?  Onshape can throw their weight behind some more great stuff.  I suspect the really cool thing about this is that native DWG editing is baked in the cake.  This has been strongly hinted at on the forums and elsewhere.  I'm stoked.  I really like the direction. 

pete_yodis

ohhh, just noticed some outlets spelled Onshape with the capital "S" in the press release.  uh-oh.    The official one from Graebert is good though.

lougallo

FastwayJim said:

So... am I the only one who completely underestimates the amount of work it *apparently* takes to "do drawings." I honestly thought you guys could throw it together pretty easily by yourselves. In my head, I'm thinking, "Come on, it's only 2D!" 

I obviously have no clue how this stuff works...

I have done rollouts of What's new in SolidWorks for years... and after seeing the support questions come in and the "detail" that the users of 2D need/want, it was more and more obviously why this direction was taken.  Could we have just built our own, sure.  We would have done what many of us who just want lines and dimensions want but the REAL drafters and companies that use the drawing as the contract would not be OK with that.  In order to really show we are serious about supporting the 2D communication aspects of Engineering, this was the right route.

pete_yodis

LouGallo said:

FastwayJim said:

So... am I the only one who completely underestimates the amount of work it *apparently* takes to "do drawings." I honestly thought you guys could throw it together pretty easily by yourselves. In my head, I'm thinking, "Come on, it's only 2D!" 

I obviously have no clue how this stuff works...

I have done rollouts of What's new in SolidWorks for years... and after seeing the support questions come in and the "detail" that the users of 2D need/want, it was more and more obviously why this direction was taken.  Could we have just built our own, sure.  We would have done what many of us who just want lines and dimensions want but the REAL drafters and companies that use the drawing as the contract would not be OK with that.  In order to really show we are serious about supporting the 2D communication aspects of Engineering, this was the right route.

If I'm reading between the lines correctly, I like where this is going...

andrew_troup

I think drawings was one of relatively few areas where Solidworks was still making substantial productivity improvements to the core package in the most recent half-decade. That tends to suggest that it's a pretty difficult component to optimise.

2D drawings of complicated items are an interesting language, where it is easy to be too literal at the expense of comprehension and conveying key information. Some essential practices of skilled communicators (particularly to do with section views) are comparable with figures of speech: they are not literally true, but they convey more than a literal truth. This makes it very hard for a computer to be a smart assistant, given that they're so literal-minded.

3dcad

For Alibre it took until v15 to have robust, stable and usable version of drawings module. Current version is v17.

andrew_troup

Another implication of the essential malleability of 2D drawings I touched on above is in industry niches. It is not uncommon for certain detailed aspects of drawing standards to run contrary to the specific needs of a particular class of drawing user, dealing with unusual components or assemblies.

Drafters experienced in those industries will need the ability to customise drawing features which would otherwise be created without their input, according to monolithic standards like ANSI, ISO or GOST.

I hope that Graeberts do not prove too 'Germanic' in their outlook on this question!

brucebartlett

Certainly appears that drawings are harder to implement than I imagined. It may also be that its an outside technology partner is doing the work so any issues here have to be sorted out. Hopefully we will see a roll out of rendering, manufacturing and simulation sooner rather than later but sometimes things take time to be done right. Could also be other issues that are slowing the release down like licensing, patents, etc.

I was interesting to see the app screen on a twitter photo today,

https://twitter.com/olegshilovitsky/status/589182185183154178/photo/1

kevin_quigley

what will be interesting will be if all these apps are available for free and with the core $100 a month package. That would be the true revolution in the CAD industry. All the tools. All the time. All for the same cost.

brucebartlett

@Kevin Quigley you would think there is going to have to be some other form of revenue coming in other than the standard $100 but maybe the shear volume will be enough to drive profit. "All the tools. All the time. All for the same cost." All hard to beleive

caradon

Kevin Quigley said:

what will be interesting will be if all these apps are available for free and with the core $100 a month package. That would be the true revolution in the CAD industry. All the tools. All the time. All for the same cost.

That will be very interesting indeed.
My main concern right now is: how integrated will these 3rd party solutions be? Will we have to juggle a different interface for each add-on?
Ideally, I want all functionality integrated sharing a universal UI, universal UX.
Interesting times! Can't wait to see/try the first API implementations...

Dries

pete_yodis

I think for simulation and maybe rendering, we might see something akin to an electronic toll collection for use of the product (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_toll_collection).  I envision the ability to put money into your FEA account and then decide when to use it on product design.  I think this would work well with the compute intensive process and build in an automatic economic function for heavy useage or light useage.  You pay for what you use, and maybe a little more when desiring answers right away under higher congestion (a higher occupancy vehicle lane - in traffic speak!).  It'll be interesting to see where we go.  I suspect the overall access to these design tools will be at lower price than last generation tools.  It usually works that way when the business models are more efficient.

brucebartlett

DriesVervoort_Caradon said:

My main concern right now is: how integrated will these 3rd party solutions be? Will we have to juggle a different interface for each add-on?
Ideally, I want all functionality integrated sharing a universal UI, universal UX.
Interesting times! Can't wait to see/try the first API implementations...

Dries

Will be interesting to see how integrated we get especially when you have multiple vendors integrated for the same services. I struggling to see how it going to all work. I sure their are some surprises too coming, looking forward too see.

tom_helsley

Well, I for one hate detail dimensioning and drafting in AutoCAD and pretty much all DWG editing programs, but I love doing it in SolidWorks.  Please tell me we won't have to create different dim styles and scales etc. for each type of dimension in Onshape.  So many other things like placement of linear dimensions that were just wrong in AutoCAD.

moengineering

Hello together,

I am very interested, how the 2D tool will work. The main problem of 3D CAD is to get the 2D drawings.
With AutoCAD oder DraftSight or any other 2D Editor you can adapt your drawings as you like and you can cheat when ever you need to cheat. But if you get the model from the 3D software you cant cheat that easy.

I dont want to say that you have to cheat and I dont like edited measuerements, thats a no go! But some views must be optimized for the workshop and thats the hard part to get that from the model on the paper.

best regards
Martin

jon_mcintyre

Drawings are indeed much harder than many people think.  I've worked on two different drawing packages now so I've seen the common perception that because drawing implementation isn't as technically challenging as the hardest 3D challenges, it shouldn't be as hard, but drawings are much more complex, so it's a different kind of challenge.   A lot has to do with supporting so many different standards which are always evolving.  Drawing developers have to deal with the challenge of giving users the flexibility to make drawings to any standard, and many display styles, while still making them easy to create (and auto-create) and modify and parametrically update to upstream changes.  

Also, just understanding all the standards isn't enough (as difficult as that can be), because they leave some flexibility, so we must also try to support real-world user conventions which aren't reflected in the standards. 

That leads me to a request to help us figure out common conventions:  send us real world sample drawings & templates.

If you have some old drawings or drawing templates that you wouldn't mind sharing with us, it would help us a lot in making the default behaviors of drawings, and the starter templates we provide, closer to what you want your end result to be, and to get us there more quickly.   We have hundreds of decisions to make on defaults for how to size and position things, what info to put where in template title blocks, and what to set for hundreds of variables.   The most useful formats for us are DWG or DXF, but any image format is fine, such as PDF or JPG.  You can send to me at jmcintyre@onshape.com. 

devon_sowell

Hello @Jon McIntyre Please include the ability to export exact 1:1 DXF files for Water/Laser/Plasma cutting. Thanks.

devon_sowell

@Jon McIntyre please include single line Fonts for Water/Laser/Plasma cutting/etching and make these special Fonts easily identifiable for use without having to remember their names/location. Thanks

kevin_quigley

@Jon McIntyre you are asking for comments on defaults...

do not make the default typeface Century Gothic!! I would love one day to meet the person who decided that for SolidWorks. It is a terrible font.

caradon

Kevin Quigley said:

I would love one day to meet the person who decided that for SolidWorks. It is a terrible font.

And HUGE!!

Dries

devon_sowell

@DriesVervoort_Caradon what do you mean by "HUGE"? Thanks

devon_sowell

@Kevin Quigley just change the SolidWorks Font & save it to your Drawing Templates

brucebartlett

I've always found Arial to be a good standard Font. That's what is default in my Google doc's, so would be a good start.

3dcad

+1 for Arial