Improvements to Onshape - December 4th, 2017

NeilCooke

Christmas comes early with the last update to Onshape for 2017! Let's get the party started with one VERY popular improvement request that will get you in the holiday mood... 

CUSTOM MATERIAL LIBRARIES

In addition to the standard material library provided by Onshape, you can now create your own custom material libraries and share them with your colleagues.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/41mwqzvojm?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=640

CREATE EDGE SELECTION

The Create Selection tool has been enhanced to enable quick selection of edges that are tangent, equal length, parallel or part of a loop.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/g6iw15hugz?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=640

DRAWINGS

As usual, there are a number of performance and quality improvements to Drawings. In this update, view quality has been improved and moving dimensions is now much easier, but the biggest update is to the Drawing Sheets flyout which now lists every view on every sheet.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/f6loeyd4zh?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=640

VERSIONED DRAWING REFERENCE HIGHLIGHTING

When inspecting a version of a drawing, hovering your mouse over a dimension will now highlight the geometry that dimension is referencing to help you understand the drawing better.

QUICK ACCESS TO RECENTLY OPENED DOCUMENTS

When the My Onshape filter is active on the Documents page, you can now access your most recently opened Documents from the Quick Access area of the Documents list, without having to activate the Recently Opened filter.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/rx2137chso?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=640

GRAPHICS PREVIEW

On larger Assemblies and Part Studios, Onshape will now display a graphics preview that you can pan, zoom and spin as the Document or Element tab is loading. 

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/bva4w71nf5?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=640

ACCESSING THE LEARNING CENTER

You can now quickly access the Learning Center from within Onshape by clicking the new button in the top right hand corner. 



Please take a moment to try out these new features and improvements and leave your comments below. For a detailed list of all the changes in this update, please see the changelog.

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.

milkenknights_test_account

This new update is awesome! Custom materials is something I've been asking for for a while, and playing with it the past few minutes I've been very happy! That being said, a really cool added feature for this would be to set parts to a specific weight. For example, if I want to import a specific motor I can now reverse engineer to set a custom density, but it would be so much easier if I can just set the weight of a specific part in a studio.

Thanks for working hard on pushing out these updates!

john_mcclary

Very nice work as usual!

Can't wait to get my hands on material library, and create selection edges (was kinda missing that from SW)

emagdalenaC2i

Nice improvements!! Drawings and performance improvements are always welcome, and the new edge selection options looks awesome 

chrisjh777

Custom Materials and Libraries!!!!  I have been waiting a long time for these.  Can't wait to set up my materials libraries to what is available in Australia.

brucebartlett

Great list of improvements, thanks, Team.  Keep up the good work all, these little things help the users. 

daniel_splawski

Great work with the scroll wheel adjustment on the feature list!

john_mcclary

daniel_splawski said:

Great work with the scroll wheel adjustment on the feature list!

+100

tyler_pope

Edge selection is a great addition. The line between very expensive desktop software and Onshape is getting thinner with every update. 

owen_sparks

john_mcclary said:

daniel_splawski said:

Great work with the scroll wheel adjustment on the feature list!

+100

(a) Heck yeah Thanks guys.

(b) Also love the new quick access do-dads, and the fact you can just zoom out to see more.  Nice

(c) Edge selection gizmo also useful.  We now need @3dcad 's suggestion on an automated "Philip-Bot" that points out to the user that they're doing it the hard way if it notices that you're not using it where appropriate.  Actually is that as daft as it sounds? 

O.S.

tago_kalbri

Big thumbs up for keeping up good work. It's always nice morning when I see that OnShape has updated  

Edge selection is really useful, materials close second.
Rest of updates nice to have

yong_kim

  

Andrew_Enslow_3DS

Thanks for the update!

1. Really liked the custom materials, now I can use any material I want! (rather dangerous)
2. New selection options are nice to have, they make quick work of the small round some plastic parts.
3. Drawing sheets and view logistical improvements are much appreciated.
Thanks for the graphics preview as well.

Hans_Ole_Leirvik

Great work !  
Santa next ? 

StephenG

Custom Material Libraries... there is a lot more to material than its density. When will all the other important material properties be added/inputable to material libraries?

Need to be able to assign a mass (weight) and inertial properties to a part.

3dcad

paul_chastell

@StephenG, I can't speak to when we will expand this to more properties, or support manual override of the mass properties of a part, though we know that both are important and intend to add such support in future. You can add your vote and comments to https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/4010/user-defined-materials-or-adding-a-weight-for-a-part. If you list out which properties are important to you too that would help us prioritize future work.

123_456660

It would be nice if the edge selection tools worked in sketches for things like offsets...

maximilian_schommer

milkenknights_test_account said:

This new update is awesome! Custom materials is something I've been asking for for a while, and playing with it the past few minutes I've been very happy! That being said, a really cool added feature for this would be to set parts to a specific weight. For example, if I want to import a specific motor I can now reverse engineer to set a custom density, but it would be so much easier if I can just set the weight of a specific part in a studio.

Thanks for working hard on pushing out these updates!

@milkenknights_test_account @StephenG

I agree with the ability to add a custom weight, but here's a quick featurescript that just gives you the density needed to make your part a requested mass. The process of making material libraries is long, so this might not be that useful, but the feature could be extended to output the csv of all densities needed to make a series of parts have certain masses. 

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/86809a3e3987a65b9de9b77d/w/a46bbc7650522765ca0c9cce/e/ced19a67fadd7ae81439b4a4

Max

Marc_Miller

While watching the video on custom materials I was wondering:  What if there was an additional column for an option default display color.  I could imagine a "Color" column where a hex (#95f442) or rgb (149,244,66) value could be entered.  Then when a part is assigned a custom material it's color is also changed at the same time.
In the spreadsheet if the color field for a custom material was left blank then assigning a custom material wouldn't change a part's current color.

3dcad

@Marc_Miller
Please create a request for voting, surely gets my +1

chrisjh777

OK, 

Custom Materials (including mass properties) are now available.  Great.  I am currently well advanced on creating a personal custom materials .csv file.

However, I was expecting mass properties for both OS and any Custom Materials to be available in the "Insert Sheet Reference Property" drop down for drawings, to be released at the same time.  I was disappointed.  I can't find an IR for this function so I can vote for it.  Does such an IR exist?

I want to be able to modify my drawing templates, so that mass properties in my drawings populate automatically (just like other properties).  Currently I have to manually copy the mass from a part studio, then switch to the relevant drawing and paste in the mass every time.  Very time consuming and inefficient.

Is there a way to automate this process? The mass data obviously exists (if a material is assigned to a part), so It should be relatively simple to write code to do this. I am not a programmer, otherwise I would have a crack myself.

Jason_S

@chrisjh777

Under "Insert sheet reference property" in the note command, Add "Material".

You have to make sure your "sheet reference" in the sheet properties is set to a part and not a Part Studio.



We cannot add mass properties yet to the drawing. Please file an improvement request.

Marc_Miller

Ok, here's an IR for optional color info for custom materials.  Thanks @3dcad
https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/7879/custom-materials-optional-color-info#latest

emagdalenaC2i

En este enlace podéis ver las Novedades de Onshape en español
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN7bcHAoq1o

jordan_simonds

daniel_splawski said:

Great work with the scroll wheel adjustment on the feature list!

Thanks for your patience while we figured out the root of the problem! It took a few tries since the browsers have subtle differences that make some solutions work in some cases but not all.

It took some lateral thinking but we think we landed on a solution that should very closely resemble the scroll speed/behavior that you expect throughout your system.

Please let us know if anything else feels unnatural. We don't like little things like this impeding anyone's workflow 

owen_sparks

Scrolling is restored to "sensible speed" here so thanks for the attention to detail :-)

Owen S.

claus_jeppesen817

Please let the community know when a material library CSV file with EN (DIN) material are created. It will be much appreciated in Europe.
Also it would be feasible for all if Onshape or others provided a material library for each materérial group (thermoplastics, rubber, copper alloys, stainless steels, etc). It makes no sense if we all should do so individually

NeilCooke

Hi @claus_jeppesen817 - because so many materials differ depending upon the supplier you choose (especially plastics), it is not our intention to create material libraries for every possible variation. Your best option is to create your own library of the materials you commonly use. A good resource is matweb.com or your suppliers' data sheets.

owen_sparks

NeilCooke said:

Hi @claus_jeppesen817 - because so many materials differ depending upon the supplier you choose (especially plastics), it is not our intention to create material libraries for every possible variation. Your best option is to create your own library of the materials you commonly use. A good resource is matweb.com or your suppliers' data sheets.

What might be nice, as OS gains market share, is for materials manufacturers to see value in their products being included in a central onshape library.  They could then maintain their OS library of products and we could select them from their certified list.

This would also allow for planned obsolescence  / seamless new material introduction.

Owen S.

chrisjh777

@Jason_S

Re Mass Properties implementation into Sheet References for drawings.

IR Raised here:  https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/7920/implement-mass-properties-of-materials-into-insert-sheet-reference-dropdown-for-drawings/p1?new=1

Chrisjh777