Geometry Completed

billy2

I've completed the geometry for the part I said I would build inside Onshape.

Onshape is fast and easy once you learn a few things like hot keys : s, n, f, l, c, shift e allowing you to fly through your design.

Just a few more bitches:
1.


why can't I dimension to a reference plane? SW can. This isn't that big of deal but your sketch construct won't always be right and I'll have to define horz & vert.

2.


This is out of sequence, but anyway, when creating surfaces, I would like select a sketch. Everything in the sketch is extruded. This is the way the solid extrude works, why not keep the surface the same? Please don't make me pick every line in a sketch, extrude them all when I pick the sketch. Keep the behavior consistent throughout the extrude command.

3.

Thank you for adding this. Now let's get it right. 'exit sketch15' please change this to 'OK'. I noticed that you added 'Cancel' to the edit extrude RMB. This is good.
The top 2 RMB line items should be 'Ok' then 'Cancel'. Sweeeeeeeet!

4.

Depth Cuing must go! In my opinion this is a bad idea. We've already had one thread about this because of confusion. After reading about it and using it I think it sucks. It adds nothing and only confuses the intent. I know it's cool that you can do it, but don't, save it for HLR. Ohhhh, this only my opinion.

5.

Sketch colors, please let me change the color of a sketch. I use this sketch a lot and would like for it to stand out. Gray sketches are boring and many gray sketches are really boring.

6.

This bitch requires nothing but thought. This sketch is referencing a sketch that I used to make another part. Is this a good idea? Since I don't have a true vert & horz, I keep going back the my 1st horizontal definition. Maybe I should have defined this layout sketch in the beginning. I like the fact that sketches aren't absorbed and can be easily used for datums. This is a real improvement, I'll just have to figure out how to use them.

Who says you can't have assy references, just get rid of assemblies. This is an assembly reference, it's just in a multi-body part.

7.

I prefer diameters. I have to remember a lot of numbers when designing something and having to deal with a radius makes the job harder. I know geometrically it should be a radius, but it's not engineering wise. Fillets have radii and shafts have diameters. I've never asked for the shaft radius, always the shaft diameter. This slot, I'd rather it be a diameter.

8.

I'm trying to pattern the slot but it won't work. Seems like I can pattern bodies or faces, but I can't pattern features. That's just strange.

9.

I thought we were going away from our hatred towards negative numbers. This shouldn't be an error, it should flip the direction.

10.

tangential select please.

11.

partial chain select & of course chain select please.

12.

I can build a resistor in less than 25 features. Without 3D sketches, I had to use compound sketches.

13.

OMG, I labeled everything trying to make it more manageable but it's not. This is a mess.

14.

The good news, I can make the wire to go where ever I want it to go. The bad news, no one else on this planet will want to work with all this crap.

I've worked a lot with multi-body parts in SW. I've done entire projects in one part file. Don't laugh it's extremely fast and very manageable. OS needs to organize it's feature list (is feature manager copy righted?) and I have some great ideas which will come in another discussion. Hopefully I'm not to late and the 4th generation of OS has already been pinned. This feature tree, feature list, feature manager needs more organization. 5 bodies and it's tough to work with.

I need instances for my resistor because I'm not creating each one over and over. Does this mean I have to use an assembly? An evil assembly. I'm not looking forward to this. This is really when the bitch'n begins.

jon_hirschtick

Bill thanks -- this is a great, thoughtful post with a lot of great input for us. I am not saying we will do everything you ask but it all looks like things you are requesting for the right reason. These are the kinds of things that lots of users will run in to.

caradon

Bill, I envy your reporting style. I need to step up my game!

"Who says you can't have assy references, just get rid of assemblies. This is an assembly reference, it's just in a multi-body part."
I agree with you. Top-down design is way too cumbersome (at least for conceptual design) in just about every old-dog 3D CAD parametric modeler.
I think the process can be made more intuitive, more robust, more flexible. I think a multi body approach is a great starting point.

Dries

billy2

Jon-

I worry sometimes I might be pushing the buttons to hard. It's important to understand that I write these while I'm designing and point out the things that don't work the way I expect. I don't add enough about the things that do work and for this, I'm sorry.

Jon, you and I are on 2 different sides of the fence, you're writing it and I'm using it. We're going to see this next generation CAD system differently.

I understand that you guys aren't writing billy CAD, you should, it'd be a kick-butt CAD system.

9 years ago I was driving home from a customer and I was extremely frustrated. I wrote an enhance request about my frustration and was surprised when it was implemented in a minor spin of SW. I think it was less than 3 weeks to implement my request. Maybe it was already in the cue.

Background: A customer called and said his assembly was broken and they were losing time. I jumped in the car and went to speak with their SW expert. Turns out he learned how to design in an assembly and on inspection, his assembly was all tied up. Everything referenced everything else. Now, what do you tell the owner of this company?

My enhancement request was to turn assembly references off. 3 weeks after my request there was an icon that stopped this behavior. No body uses the icon and maybe it shouldn't exist. If you know why it's there, then you should understand how assembly references work. I use them and like them and I don't turn them off.

I know you'll have assemblies in this next generation CAD system. People expect it. But, please don't discount making part studios more functional. We need body instancing (copying the resistor around, both depend & independent of it's parent). Also we need motion in part studios. Not the pick and tug that you provide in an assembly but an animation that puts bodies in different locations. As a designer this is what I really want.

As far as direct modeling is concerned, listen to DriesV, we need this too and I fear not enough bitch'n is going on about this.

This next generation CAD is going to take many new directions and it should. Thanks for putting it together, it's time.

I have to do an onshape assembly to complete my contract with onshape. Instead of bitch'n about assemblies I'm thinking about writing the procedures we use to putting together SW assemblies. I've never seen a good discussion on this topic, maybe now would be a good time. Where I work, you are not allowed to build assemblies any way you think is best. We all try and build assemblies the same way. It's nice to have 12 engineers and all the projects are built the same way.

Rule #1, if you're going to use assemblies, have a plan, a style sheet, what ever you want to call it; have every one doing the same thing.

We did this and it's nice to open an assembly knowing how it was put together.

I could sit here all day and ramble on about CAD, but I have weeds to pull........

Next weekend I'll put the assembly together and start a new thread. I hope this will spark an explosion and we'll all better because of it.