Improvements to Onshape - August 16th, 2017

NeilCooke

It's update time again!  Enjoy this latest round of improvements and as always, leave your comments below.

REAL-TIME CHAT IN COMMENTS

The comments system now supports real-time text chat between multiple users working in the same Document.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/ve5muskqij?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=640

ANGLE FLANGE BY REFERENCE

You can now specify an angle reference when creating a sheet metal flange.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/uu04bl23e8?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=640

MERGE SCOPE FOR SURFACES

When creating surfaces using Onshape's advanced modeling tools, you can now specify a merge scope and choose which surfaces to merge them with.
 

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/tcqcyipmov?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=640

DATUM EXTENSION LINES

A datum symbol can now be dragged off a face and an extension line is automatically created.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/bnlrveukci?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=640

GRIP EDIT RADIAL AND DIAMETER DIMENSIONS

You can now edit the target geometry for radial and diameter dimensions using the grip point at the tip of the arrowhead.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/g4au5htr9a?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=640

COPY ANNOTATIONS BETWEEN DRAWINGS

As well as being able to copy annotations such as Notes, Surface Finish symbols, Weld symbols, Geometric Tolerances and Tables between Sheets of the same Drawing, you can now also copy and paste them into different Drawings in the same Document and Drawings in other Documents too. This makes it much easier to copy standard annotations from one Drawing to another.

UPDATE VERSIONED DRAWINGS TO REFLECT CHANGES TO METADATA

This latest update contains a significant architectural change designed to improve your ability to implement a release management workflow using Onshape. This work lays the foundation for new capabilities that you will see in future releases. We are making this feature available now so that you can take advantage of this new workflow and you can read a more detailed explanation here to explain our thinking and direction.  

VERSIONED DRAWING THUMBNAILS

Now when a version of a Document is created, a thumbnail is generated for each Part, Assembly, and Drawing so you can see at a glance how that Drawing looked at that version when using the Tab Manager or other tools that display thumbnails.

Note: the thumbnail is generated after a versioned drawing has been viewed for the first time.

QUICK LINKS TO IMAGE FILES IN DRAWINGS

You can now quickly find the source file of an image added to a drawing by right clicking the image and selecting one of two available options. If the image is located within the active Document, the menu will display "Switch to <element name>" and you will be taken straight to that tab. If the image was linked from another Document, the menu will display "Open linked document" and the image tab within that linked Document will be opened in a new browser tab.

OPEN VIEW PROPERTIES FROM VIEW AND SCALE LABELS

When you double click a view label or a scale label, the view properties dialog will now appear. Previously, double clicking these labels would allow you to edit the text in the label. If you still wish to do this, right click the label and select "Edit note". For your convenience, the right-click context menu for labels now also includes all the options found on the view right-click context menu, and the options for "Copy" and "Move to" have been removed.




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.

3dcad

Ah simple chat is finally here, great!

One question though, if pro user share doc with free user, can they chat?

And other great things for thin & flat & 2D people

Awesome progress!

NeilCooke

@3dcad yes - in the video the "middle" user is a free user

3dcad

Great, I find this feature very useful!

john_mcclary

Very nice!

Real-Time chat with pop-up notifications ! perfect for my tunnel vision

Angle flange by reference! Sweet I can now get rid of a crap load of variables and other work arounds

All the drawing updates looking good

brucebartlett

Great to see some more updates, improvements to the comments are welcome as are the drawing and surfacing improvements.

Special thanks to @lana  for the flange align in sheet metal this should work a treat for those complex angle jobs. 

With comments and Onshape over the past few weeks, I have been trying to reduce my reliance on marked up screen shots by using comments but I am finding that the screen shot still serves me well. I regularly load Onshape on my phone take a screen markup with iPhone mark up tools and place in my chat or email. Tagging to geometry and zooming to the view angle of the tag is great but I am thinking we still need some form of markup.  

emagdalenaC2i

I like the new path you are following with this option to update versioned drawings to reflect the changes in the Metadata

Maybe we are a bit closer to let free users (Non-CAD user) to update Metadata as I wrote here 

There is another nice improvement, in FeatureScript you can now set the focus to the component of the UI that you want with the UIHint INITIAL_FOCUS ;-)

brucebartlett

3dcad said:

And other great things for thin & flat & 2D people

We just need something now for those with multi personalities, maybe next month

emagdalenaC2i

attend to your configuration @brucebartlett ;-)

3dcad

I still have my beer in cold for that. Though I would like to have everything now, I highly appreciate Onshape for keeping the high quality in testing and not trying to release more than they have ready.

jakeramsley

brucebartlett said:

Special thanks to @lana  for the flange align in sheet metal this should work a treat for those complex angle jobs. 

Lana does a ton of great work with sheet metal (and beyond), but she wasn't the one who did flange alignment.

lana

@brucebartlett
Thank you for giving us the idea for flange alignment. The credit for implementation goes to @Jake_Rosenfeld

Jake_Rosenfeld

Thanks @lana and @brucebartlett !!

Tony_C_

Is this new or did I just never notice it before?

brucebartlett

lana said:

@brucebartlett
Thank you for giving us the idea for flange alignment. The credit for implementation goes to @Jake_Rosenfeld

Now it's much easier to do this part

philip_thomas

@Tony_C_ Sorry, it's been there a while. 
You can also RMB over any mate and get the same option

jakeramsley

Tony_C_ said:

Is this new or did I just never notice it before?

Animate went live May 26, 2016

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/3909/improvements-to-onshape-may-26th-2016

emagdalenaC2i

I have found another little improvement... Type for variable feature

philip_thomas

^^^ Yeah @NeilCooke - how come we didn't tell people about that one?
(this is where he tells me it wasn't new this release)

NeilCooke

@philip_thomas I guess @ilya_baran must have snuck that one in there without telling anyone! 

owen_sparks

Great work guys, thanks for the updates.

Owen S.

ilya_baran

@NeilCooke
No one noticed the most important update!  Variables are now named "#foo = 37 in" instead of "Variable #foo = 37 in" (new variables, that is -- old features stay as is).

owen_sparks

ilya_baran said:

@NeilCooke
No one noticed the most important update!  Variables are now named "#foo = 37 in" instead of "Variable #foo = 37 in" (new variables, that is -- old features stay as is).

This is nice, thanks @ilya_baran.

Please sir, can we have some more?

Example.
If we declare a variable lets say "MyLength = 100 mm"
An open sketch dimension field shows "#MyLength"
A closed sketch dimension field shows "100"

I'd really prefer the closed sketch dimension field to show "#MyLength = 100 mm" in a box that resizes so we can see the full text at once.

Thankingyouplease,

Owen S.

3dcad

@ilya_baran
A BIG thanks for this! It is so huge that maybe @NeilCooke thought he would make another thread will full lenght movie..

ilya_baran

@owen_sparks
That would require some UX thinkng -- the balance is against taking up space on the screen and "noise" in a busy sketch.

@3dcad
Nah, we were just going to do a press conference.

owen_sparks

Thanks @ilya_baran
We need something that shows if a sketch dimension is driven by a variable.  Currently we have to open each dimension to see if there is a variable hiding behind it.  Be that a different colour, an icon, or preferably the name and value.   Just something.  Even showing "#100" in my example above is just one extra character...

Cheers, Owen S.

konstantin_shiriazdanov

ilya_baran said:

That would require some UX thinkng -- the balance is against taking up space on the screen and "noise" in a busy sketch.

it may be the place for several checkbox options in sketch dialog deactivated by default, such as - show external references (to hilight by another color constraints to external geometry) and show variables in dimentions

3dcad

I would like to have button (and hotkey) to switch between just value / #variablename = value. This is because I take a lot of screenshots with 'show dimensions' view and I don't want var-names messing up my MBD

3dit_software

Thanks for those Datum extensions, Thumbnails and metadata upgrades!

thomas_rumble

The chat capabilities and flange reference angle are huge improvements! "Update versioned drawings" has me excited for what we can expect in the following months

amCAD

Very good. Any improvement on surface modelling is more than welcome.