Developing Surface Features (Teaming up with Onshape)

Cache_River_Mill

Dear Onshape,

Our company loves your software and equally the team behind it. Currently, Onshape has excellent model building features and some surface editing tools; we would like to make surfacing even better! With the help of maximilian_schommer, we would like to further develop the [Sculpt Surface] feature script. 

The Sculpt Surface feature is slow and highly inefficient. We hope to improve the usefulness of this feature by re-writing it. Improvements will drastically decrease the time it takes to use this feature. Also, the changes will allow the modified surface to be constrained to its surroundings. This will greatly help with the making of parametric surfaces.

Feature Link: 
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/b8730d44070bc0466ad80444/w/b111d39908fbb971f1521124/e/d31d352b7aa2783efde5d023


Proposal: Our company will fund a percentage of the work, will Onshape team up with us to make this an official feature for Onshape?


Goals to increase the efficiency of the Sculpt Surface feature:

• Select the U & V initial positions based on a sketch lines.

• Select and move multiple manipulators at one time.

• Dimension and constrain manipulators from model. Perhaps if the grid were based off of a sketch, the manipulators could be dots that can be dimensioned.

• Check/uncheck box "wait to calculate feature until changes are completed"

The current Sculpt surface feature allowed us to create this solid part model:



Unfortunately, the model took a long time to create and can not be parametric due to the surfaces of the leaves. The ability to constrain organic faces to a sketch or part would allow for fully parametric organic surfaces similar to the ones in this model.

We appreciate the Onshape team and hope you will consider our proposal for this feature.


Sincerely,

Cache River Mill

paul_chastell

@cache_river_millworks. When looking for a feature that we don't currently provide there are a couple of options. If the Onshape standard library provides all the operations that a custom feature would need then you could engage the services of one of the talented individuals that frequent this forum to write a custom feature that meets your specific needs, or in this case to further develop the existing one. On the other hand if Onshape does not provide all the needed operations or it is important to you that this be an official feature rather than a custom one then I would reach out to support with an enhancement request. We can then work with you to determine what would be the best path forward.

Cache_River_Mill

Not sure where the right place to put this proposal. I apologize if this is the wrong spot.

paul_chastell

@cache_river_millworks. When looking for a feature that we don't currently provide there are a couple of options. If the Onshape standard library provides all the operations that a custom feature would need then you could engage the services of one of the talented individuals that frequent this forum to write a custom feature that meets your specific needs, or in this case to further develop the existing one. On the other hand if Onshape does not provide all the needed operations or it is important to you that this be an official feature rather than a custom one then I would reach out to support with an enhancement request. We can then work with you to determine what would be the best path forward.