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Improvements to Onshape - January 2nd, 2018
NeilCooke
Moderator, Onshape Employees Posts: 5,714 
Happy New Year! Welcome everyone to 2018 and what a great way to kick things off with an awesome Onshape update!
However, before you dive in and start building configurations for all your fasteners...
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.
CONFIGURATIONS
You can now create multiple variations of your parts using configurations. In summary, multiple independent configuration inputs enable you to quickly create complex configurations with varying dimensions, features and part properties. Configurations in Onshape are different from what you may be used to, so please watch the video through to the end. A series of blog posts and webinars are scheduled for the next week or so to demonstrate the awesome power of configurations in Onshape, so please keep an eye out for those.However, before you dive in and start building configurations for all your fasteners...
STANDARD CONTENT
Onshape now provides a built-in library of standard fasteners for use in assemblies. Each fastener includes a mate connector to make them easy to assemble. Automated assembly tools make stacks of fasteners like bolt-washer-washer-nut combinations easy to build.ROLLED SHEET METAL
Onshape will now recognise large radius arcs and extruded splines and convert them into rolled sheet metal parts.CREATE SELECTION IN SKETCH
The Create Selection tool can now be used in sketches to select entities that are tangent, connected, equal in length / radius, or parallel.SKETCH VIEWS IN DRAWINGS
You can now insert a view of a sketch into a drawing to detail layouts or simple platework that don't require a full 3D model.VIEW IMPORTED 2D DRAWINGS
Now when you import a DWG, DXF or DWT file, the element tab containing the file can now be viewed using ARES® Kudo™ by Gräbert."S" KEY SHORTCUT TOOLBAR IN DRAWINGS
By popular demand, the S key shortcut toolbar has now been added to drawings. This means you can now add your dimensions, datums, notes and balloons by pressing the S key on your keyboard and selecting a command from your user defined toolbar that pops up right by your cursor. To edit the icons in the shortcut toolbar, go to My Account in the top right corner of the screen, then Preferences.SHEET PROPERTIES DIALOG AND REFERENCE LINKS
The sheet properties dialog is now more consistent with other dialogs in drawings. There are also new link icons in the sheets and view properties dialogs that will switch the tab to the referenced part or assembly in the current Document or open a referenced linked Document.SELECTION IMPROVEMENTS FOR SHEETS FLYOUT
In the new sheets flyout, you can now select more than one view from the list. This enables you to modify multiple views on a single sheet (for example, to remove all tangent lines from every view on the sheet) or delete multiple views from multiple sheets at the same time.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.
Senior Director, Technical Services, EMEAI
16
Comments
Outstanding updates, what a statement of intent to start off the year.
Huge congratulations to all involved.
Owen S.
HWM-Water Ltd
CAD Engineering Manager
This update to sheet metal is something I've been waiting for for a long time, this is the one thing I still needed in order to use Onshape fully at work, and now it's here!
Also, the capabilities of the standard content and configurations blew my socks off, can't wait to give those a try.
Thank you so much Onshape!
Owen S.
HWM-Water Ltd
Owen S.
HWM-Water Ltd
Very happy to see configurations as well, I already have uses for that.
Thanks for adding the sketch selection!
Happy New year!
At first I was worried that this means there are some limitations. The opposite is true. OS configurations can do everything I would expect (standard config table) and so much more. Configurable selections, independently configurable inputs, independent properties. I love this. Instead of having to map out every single permutation of inputs, you only have to configure what's actually changing. When configuring 3 features with 3 options each, that would normally require 27 rows in a config table. Now, you can do the same thing with just 3 lists of 3 rows each. So much easier!
Best new feature yet.
Twitter: @onshapetricks & @babart1977
I think I just checked off most of my list of "Things I really really want from OnShape".
You all have been busy!
Can't wait to try this all out.
I can't pick a favorite this time sorry. It's ALL top shelf features this update!
Yes! The other kicker IMHO is the interaction with FeatureScript -- the ability to call a configured part studio from a custom feature. Here's a simple example illustrating a sheet metal bounding box feature with 7 lines of FeatureScript: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/a2b17e24cf3090794e3e06a6/v/14f2fc44291f8e2ec2690e8d/e/23c836ee9be19b5d48dad1eb
Twitter: @onshapetricks & @babart1977
Wow, that's pretty amazing for such a simple example. So much flexibility.
@john_mcclary
That gif made my cheeks hurt
Twitter: @onshapetricks & @babart1977
Couple of thoughts.
- When you are rolling sheet metal you often need to include green material to be able to process. It would be very useful to be able to add this to the flat pattern
- When you set the company Part Number and Description I see that you set the material used which makes sense but there was no dialogue to set material. It would appear that if for instance you labeled a company part number for a SS316 fastener and then used the same item again but specified SS304 it would overwrite the company part number and description ??
- When you add a sketch to a drawing it would be handy to have an option to automatically show the sketch dimensions to prevent having to add them all back in again. Then you can add additional or hide un-necessary as appropriate.
- This functionality to upload DXF/DWG etc is brilliant however we find that customers normally only distribute PDF's. Is this planning in the works to enable the reading of PDF's to convert to onshape drawings etc? I have just spent the morning re-drawing parts from a customers PDF's to fabricate.
Out of mathematical curiosity, in your example above, why is the Clearance from Input set to (0.1 - 0.1 / sqrt(2)) in? That's oddly specific. It seems somehow related to the sides/diagonal of a square?
-CRM
1. the clearance is correct (difference between circle radius and distance from square center to a corner) if the bend radius is 0.1 inch, but in the versioned SM model the bend radius is 0.09 inch
2. The flanges are not properly offset by the clearance, so the sheet metal box still does overlap a cube.
Basically, this was meant as an example to illustrate the concept, not as an actual useful feature.
0.1 - 0.1 / sqrt(2) = 0.1*(1 - sqrt(2)/2)
Btw, wouldn't checking "Clearance includes bends" with a clearance of 0 take care of this automatically?
On your picture, though, careful: it illustrates 0.1 * (sqrt(2) - 1), which a little bigger.
You need to create the drawing using an ANSI standard instead of ISO. I'm not sure how to change that after the fact, or if it's even possible.
Do you plan to give standard content to part studio also?
I do use currently "PP capscrews beta" feature to make holes into multible parts etc.
Idea...OnShape standard contect for Part Studio + PP capscrews features would equal pure win
For today we can use a workaround for partstudio standard content.
Assembly with desired part.
In context edit
Copy in place
Then you have a part studio part that can be derived as required.
Owen S.
HWM-Water Ltd