Introducing the New Onshape Learning Center

noa

Hello everyone, I’m pleased to announce the launch of our new learning portal – the Onshape Learning Center –  the quickest and most efficient way of transitioning to full-cloud CAD.

This portal is made up of self-paced courses with videos, practice exercises, and self-check quizzes. The content is geared directly towards those coming from a parametric 3D CAD background and who want to learn how to maximize their use of Onshape as quickly as possible. It assumes a strong knowledge of traditional CAD concepts so that we can focus on what is unique about Onshape and how to best use it.

The Learning Center’s premium content is included with all annual subscriptions to Onshape Professional. Free Onshape account users can access our Quick Start Guide. As with all Onshape updates, both Free and Professional users will continue to see improvements and new content. For a deeper look at the offerings and benefits of our new Learning Center, please see today’s blog post.

We’re excited to bring you this new, flexible method of learning, but it’s just the beginning. Please continue to voice your needs, feedback, criticisms and thanks as we build upon this new learning platform.

If you are already an annual Professional customer, you can go to your training dashboard where your courses are waiting and ready. If you’re enjoying a Free Onshape account, please visit the Learning Center to see our free offerings or contact us to upgrade to Onshape Professional.

 

All the best,

-Noa Flaherty

Onshape Customer Success

brian_brady

@noa, what about Educational users? What type of access do they get?

Brian

noa

Hi @brian_brady,

For this initial launch, the content is only available to our annual professional customers. It's still very early days for the Learning Center – We certainly see the value in providing learning content to our education users and plan on opening this up a bit more down the road. We do have a number of resources available to our educators today including our Quick Start Guide, Intro to CAD, and College Curriculum.

Best,

-Noa

chris_winters404

This series is a great tool! It reinforces the user interface and showcases real world applications and the fundamental strengths of Onshape. I highly recommend all levels of professional users to go through all of the modules. You will notice the increased productivity and new avenues of applying Onshape to your engineering/manufacturing processes.
Great job Noa and the rest of Onshape,
Chris Winters

coleman

OK so how do I enroll in the courses?  I see the message that says this course is included with your annual subscription...but there is no enroll button, just a contact us button.   

noa

Hi @coleman, you should be all set now.

If you're an annual professional customer and your training dashboard is empty, please contact us – this shouldn't be the case.

brian_jordan

noa said:

Hi @coleman, you should be all set now.

If you're an annual professional customer and your training dashboard is empty, please contact us – this shouldn't be the case.

I continue to have the problem described by @coleman. Please confirm exactly where I should contact Onshape; is this a technical issue or a sales issue? Or am I just failing to understand something? My Training Dashboard show 15 courses available with 1 (the free quick start guide) completed and no way, as far as I can see for progressing to any other courses.
[EDIT 1] I also notice that I have "Developers" against my name, a mistake surely? [EDIT 2] That has now disappeared but so has "Member". Is there some confusion over my status and is this why I can's access the training material?

noa

Hi @brian_jordan I took a look and believe I fixed it. If you continue to experience trouble, please submit a support ticket including a screenshot of what you see and we'll get you all sorted out.

brian_jordan

Thank you @noa. Everything is now working.

terry_pipkin

Excellent courses for learning. I have completed the first 8 or 9 courses and have enjoyed the experience. Hope to finish the rest soon.

walter

can 1 pay for just the courses , if not annual professional customer . would like to learn before i upgrade.

3dcad

Paying a single month fee of Pro would be probably the cheapest course in the industry that also includes full license of the software.

I like the way how this learning course wraps all together, I'm almost finished but I have to admit I didn't have time to proceed with the example data. I'd hope more quiz to refresh advanced users.

terry_pipkin

I have completed the courses and received both badges but my thirst for knowledge still exists so will there be future courses? 

wiley

Is the premium content not available for monthly professional subscriptions?

noa

@terry_pipkin we are working on it! As with most things Onshape, I cannot speak to a timeline for when new content will become available.

@wiley that is correct.

fastwayjim

Looks awesome @noa! Congrats!

brian_brady

noa said:

Hi @brian_brady,

For this initial launch, the content is only available to our annual professional customers. It's still very early days for the Learning Center – We certainly see the value in providing learning content to our education users and plan on opening this up a bit more down the road. We do have a number of resources available to our educators today including our Quick Start Guide, Intro to CAD, and College Curriculum.

Best,

-Noa

@Noa

I see that the Learning Center took previously publicly available content and put it behind the Pro firewall. I am starting to set up my college class for the fall and had a link to the Onshape Essentials content. When I click on the link now I get sent to the new "new" Learning Center and the content states that it is a Learning Pathway. When I click on it there is a statement that says "This Learning Pathway is included as part of your annual subscription" but I don't see how I can actually access it. Will my students who have Education accounts no longer be able to access what they could last fall?

I use most (but not all) of the College Curriculum for my class. It seems to focus more on designing products whereas I want to include machine design elements.

Brian

noa

@brian_brady the two Learning Pathways that are available to Pros are completely made up of brand new content. If you are referring to Onshape Essential Training, that has been renamed to Onshape Quick Start Guide and is available to all of our users here: https://learn.onshape.com/courses/onshape-series-quick-start-guide.

If you are referring to our free College Curriculum, that is still (and always will be) free to our Education users here: https://www.onshape.com/edu/college-curriculum

brian_brady

@noa There used to be a Quick Start Guide and Essential Training that were different. I had links to both in my Blackboard course from last fall. Today the Quick Start link takes me to the Quick Start. The Essential Training link takes me to the Learning Pathways. I swear they each had different content 12 months ago.

noa

Not sure about the links, Brian, but I can assure you the content is the same!

-Noa

marcus_bernstein

This makes no sense to me. Why open this training program designed for people new to Onshape to only professional users. Most professional users will have tried out Onshape in a free trial first, but how would they get the hang of it and know to purchase without this type of tool to help them get a feel for the Onshape workflow. 

Anyone who has paid money for Onshape already knows how to use it, if not, there's no way they would pay money for the premium features before trying the free trials. 

I will be excited for the day these tutorials are available to all Onshape members, but for now I'm just confused why anyone given access would use this resource. 

owen_sparks

marcus_bernstein said:

This makes no sense to me. Why open this training program designed for people new to Onshape to only professional users. Most professional users will have tried out Onshape in a free trial first, but how would they get the hang of it and know to purchase without this type of tool to help them get a feel for the Onshape workflow. 

Anyone who has paid money for Onshape already knows how to use it, if not, there's no way they would pay money for the premium features before trying the free trials. 

I will be excited for the day these tutorials are available to all Onshape members, but for now I'm just confused why anyone given access would use this resource. 

Yup, hear hear.  I worked out how to use OS without the tutorials before choosing to take out the Pro subscription and have not looked at the tutorials since.  I believe it's only annual subscriptions not monthly too.  Eeesh.

Owen S.

michael3424

owen_sparks said:

 I believe it's only annual subscriptions not monthly too.  Eeesh.

Owen S.

I thought that monthly subscriptions were no longer available?

3dcad

Same story here, only looked the tutorials through but already knew that stuff through trial&error / forum questions.. It should be available for everyone to make it worth exist. What harm it can do for Onshape if someone learns how to use it?

barry_gibson

well, just my thoughts on the subject,having tried onshape  and learning as i go along, onshape accounts then got in touch with me via phone and email to see if i would become a paid up member, but for me that's trying to learn,or has nothing to hide in the public documents this is not financially  viable, but i understand that the employees at onshape need paying, nothing in life is free so what i said to the onshape salesman (ben) is i would be quite happy to pay something for the tutorials, so giving some thing back to onshape for my free use of there software, cannot do that sir you have to pay a years membership to view the tutorials, come on onshape please have a think about this, a little bit of some thing is better then nothing at all. 

owen_sparks

barry_gibson said:

well, just my thoughts on the subject,having tried onshape  and learning as i go along, onshape accounts then got in touch with me via phone and email to see if i would become a paid up member, but for me that's trying to learn,or has nothing to hide in the public documents this is not financially  viable, but i understand that the employees at onshape need paying, nothing in life is free so what i said to the onshape salesman (ben) is i would be quite happy to pay something for the tutorials, so giving some thing back to onshape for my free use of there software, cannot do that sir you have to pay a years membership to view the tutorials, come on onshape please have a think about this, a little bit of some thing is better then nothing at all. 

My honest opinion looking in from the outside is there are a truly great bunch of engineers and other assorted folks at Onshape working their very hardest to make the best CAD system possible.  Then there are some other people in a different department seemingly doing their very best to sabotage that work and keep potential customers from giving Onshape their business.

Examples:-
(1) Removing Free Private Documents.
(4) No mid tier account.
(2) Transition from monthly to annual subscriptions.
(3) Hiding training behind pay-wall that you can't even pay to get through.
(4) No mid tier account.

Not trying to cause aggravation, just stating how I see it.

Owen S.

barry_gibson

No truer words were ever spoken 0wen

michael3424

@owen_sparks - +1 to everything you wrote, especially to your points (4) and (4).  

3dcad

It is modern to give something for free, many 'internet' companies do that.. Usually it only goes for a period of time to gather enough users and then they come up with system to make money.

I was just thinking that Alibre cost was $395 for 4 cd's containing videos of the software. And I thought that was a bargain compared to $1500 / couple days course cost for SW.

But I do agree with point 2. That one I don't understand and it's somehow against the whole idea of 'renting' the software as you need. I would have understood if they took the price a bit higher for monthly subscription.

As Onshape has clealry shown that their interest is paying customers, they should fix those free accounts so that they can belong to companies and automate the sharing of company owned documents to everyone inside the company. That would lower the step to get more paid licenses for each company. And bring back monthly fee, if company decides to upgrade person X from free to 2 months Pro for project - it is more than likely that when sales rep calls after 6 weeks and makes the offer for extending it to year, both parties will be happy and another license is sold.

brucebartlett

I was also disappointed to the see the monthly subscription disappear. For CAD contractors, SMB's/Startups I thought it was a big selling point as a way to scale for a short term Jobs, then letting that account lapse if not required after the job is complete. Paying a premium for a month to month contract wouldn't be an issue. 

I also think it is very important that edu has access to all the tutorials as these are the future CAD users and getting them onto Onshape will cement the future with Cloud CAD. Everyone I have talked to using Onshape at schools absolutely loves it.

lemon1324

Case in point: edu user here who loves Onshape and is trying to convince everyone at my school to use it. Some of the pushback I get from classmates is "But I already kind of know Solidworks, and it's free because the school pays for it," after which they go on to attempt group projects using Solidworks, which is a mess.

I feel like Onshape would be well served recruiting these future CAD users with more accessible tutorials for edu users (whose school may not be teaching Onshape with the instructor kit) explicitly focusing on the cloud/shared aspect, as outside the enterprise environment, schoolwork is really where people like me see the advantage of simultaneous edits/cloud.

Also, if there hadn't been an edu plan with unlimited documents, I'd have definitely stuck with Solidworks for most of my miscellaneous school needs and definitely would not have got around to developing the FeatureScripts I did.