Wish List for OnShape Features/Capabilities

dennis_20

My reference point is SolidWorks as I am sure it is for many of you.  I've been using SWX since the original 1995 version, changing the date on my computer to keep using the 30-day eval version until we bought ten seats of SWX96.  I even used the precursor to SolidWorks called DesignView.

Here is my list of features/capabilities that I am looking for in OnShape.  These are in no particular order.  As I am new to OnShape probably some of these exist and I just haven't learned enough yet to know where they are or what they are called.  Please educate me on those if you will.
1. Equivalents to the following SWX items:
   a) Toolbox (should be much, much nicer since a clean sheet development won't have the legacy problems Toolbox has)
   b) Hole Wizard (this is invaluable)
   c) Isolate command in assemblies
   d) Hide/Show and change transparency
2. Through-all cut in both directions
3. Design Table equivalency for configurations
4. Equations
5. Link to external driving files such as Excel, Google Sheets, or an equivalent
6. Motion simulation similar to adding gravity, motors, springs, cylinders, etc. that SWX can do.  Including friction would be a huge plus!
7. Materials - sets the density, properties, and appearance.  SWX does this very nicely.
8. Sketch constraints must be able use previous geometry (make a sketch line collinear with a part edge that is behind it, etc.).  This includes the ability to select an edge or face and convert or offset entities.
9. eDrawing or the equivalent so I can send files to a sales rep and he can view, rotate, and measure without having to have an OnShape account.
10. Offline operations for those times when I'm going into a black/secure area and will not be able to be online.  I'm thinking something like a check-out of the program and necessary part files that would allow me to work offline.  (I'm not holding my breath for this one.)
11. 3D ContentCentral equivalent (something more direct than the workaround of going into 3DCC and downloading the file in a SWX format then opening it up in OnShape).

Please add your comments.

- - -Dennis

3dcad

I think you can find some discussion on almost every point of your list. And it should be also easy now that we just got the new fancy search engine
You have good points there and I think you would enjoy reading and commenting some threads from past couple of months.
+1 for all

billy2

You can do a lot of the items in your list. I'll let an onshape employee enumerate them for you and explain where they are located.

andrew_troup

For me, Onshape will become commercially useful at about the time it offers the same basic functions as, say, Solidworks 2003.

Naturally I would not want OnS to roll back , in  the many areas where (generally because of the more refined conceptual underpinnings) OnS is already far ahead of that package.  

What I'm saying is this: a listing of what I need from an MCAD tool to carry on earning a living as a machine and mechanism designer would be unrealistically long, but I know that I could get by (at a pinch) if I had to roll back to Sw2003.

I remain more confident than ever that all needed features and functions will arrive in due course. The interesting question is this: can Onshape continue to enhance the finer points of the user interface to the point when the package becomes 'transparent to the user', for experienced and competent users, even when carrying out quite difficult designs. That's the true holy grail, I reckon.

Accountants may buy MCAD according to a 'feature checklist', but I consider this to be a horrible misapplication of that clipboard-toting mentality.

andrew_troup

As for the OP's wishlist, a few items are already addressed

1c:"Isolate" is available in Assemblies as well as Part Studios, from the RMB menu: it's called "Hide other parts"
1d: "Hide/Show" is available: RMB + the eyeball icon in the Feature list
Transparency can be controlled globally from the view cube, or for individual parts by RMB from the Parts list, "Appearance/Opacity"



There may be others.

jakeramsley

dennis_20 said:

8. Sketch constraints must be able use previous geometry (make a sketch line collinear with a part edge that is behind it, etc.).  This includes the ability to select an edge or face and convert or offset entities.

While we don't allow inferencing to external geometry, you can explicitly make these constraints.  If you select the line and the edge you want to be colinear and click "coincident", then it will apply the constraint to both.  The caveat is that it will constraint to the edge as it projects into the sketch plane.

If you have any specific examples, please post them and we'll do our best to help you.

dennis_20

Jake,

The coincident constraint is part of what I am after.  Thanks for that help.  The latter part of that item #8 is also something I am after - pick a face or an edge and project its edges into the active sketch constraining it to that entity in the process (and allowing me to break those constraints and change the linetype if I desire.  Again, my reference point is SWX so this is the "convert entities" feature.  "Offset entities" is right there with it.

jakeramsley

dennis_20 said:

Jake,

The coincident constraint is part of what I am after.  Thanks for that help.  The latter part of that item #8 is also something I am after - pick a face or an edge and project its edges into the active sketch constraining it to that entity in the process (and allowing me to break those constraints and change the linetype if I desire.  Again, my reference point is SWX so this is the "convert entities" feature.  "Offset entities" is right there with it.

I'm not a solidworks expert, so I am not 100% sure this is what you want, but I think we have this with Use/Project and Offset in sketch.

1. Select the use/project tool.


2. With the tool active, select the face you want projected into your sketch.  It will come in with a 'Projected' constraint on it that you can remove if you'd like.


3. Similarly, select the offset tool in sketch.


4. Select the face you want to offset.  This will get a closed loop of the outer edges defining the face.  If you click-drag you can drag and drop the offset to where you want.  If you single click, you can then grab the manipulator to change the offset.  Clicking on the manipulator flips the offset direction.  Clicking in freespace will place the offset.  This will apply an 'Offset' constraint that you can delete if you wish.

dennis_20

Jake,

That is exactly what I am looking for with regard to that particular capability.  Thank you very much!


It is evident that a large part of my inability to find what I want is due to terminology.  This is similar to when I was coming from Pro\E(xcrutiating) and converted to SolidWorks.  I knew how to do things, but they were called different terms between the two, i.e., Family Tables in Pro\E are Design Tables in SWX.

How about this for a suggestion to you great folks at OnShape.  Give us a table of "conversion terms".  (We're engineers and love our spreadsheets and tables!  Besides, almost everyone is coming from another CAD system, so address the elephant in the room and help us eat the sandwich.)  We could even hide the columns for the CAD systems we have not used and just show the columns most relevant to us; in my case SolidWorks and OnShape.  (Ideally this could be saved as a setting of our userid.)

Make the OnShape term hyperlinked to Help on that subject or tutorial on the (better) way to achieve that in OnShape.  Boy, this would expedite the learning curve!!  So much of converting to a new system is just that, converting.  For the most part we already know how to do stuff, we just don't know what it is called in the new system!  This would dramatically reduce the requests for help/tech support and reduce the amount of unnecessary questions from being posted to the forums (by me at least).

To really make the Help smart, embed these terms as system-specific synonyms in the Help file such that if the user is coming from SolidWorks, for example, and searches for "convert entities" the Help should respond with something that teaches and points to "Project".  Talk about smart help!

- - -Dennis

peter_franzen

Wow, perfect timing on the Project/use tool.  I was scratching my head about how to accomplish that.

dennis_20

I just submitted a "ticket" for the conversion terms described in my May 22 post.  (I think this is a very helpful idea.)  I did not realize this is the way we are supposed to submit requests.  To me, the tickets are for problems/bugs and not for feature requests.  I thought that this forum was the right place for discussion of feature requests.  That way the community can weigh in on its importance and help shape its definition.

Will the feature requests we submit as tickets ever get public visibility so we can see what each other is requesting?

lougallo

@dennis_20 Working on adding that soon here for voting.

lisa_dohogne

Wow!  This wish list is on the mark!  I especially like the idea of the Terminology Conversion Table. 

wayne_wright

Filter for what is displayed in the Tabs and list.

We need to be able to select a filter for what is displayed in the the Tabs and the "double burger" thing.  The filter possibilities should be at least:

1) Only Onshape Part objects
2) Only Onshape Assy objects
3) Only Onshape part & assy objects
4) Only imported files
5) Everything.

This would greatly "declutter" the Tab and double burger icon.   Once we import a solidworks file, we really don't need to be looking at it in the tabs because we will be working mostly with the resulting part object.

W. Wright

3dcad

@wayne_wright  I had some similar yet different ideas in another thread, but I think we have mutual goal: to get tabs easier to navigate
My thoughts on another thread: https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/4322#Comment_4322

3dcad said:

Absolutely great stuff!

I would like to see also simple copy & paste stuff into document:
- Copy image from web and paste into tab (image data, not link)
- Copy & paste links, click to follow
- Copy text from email paste in
- Take screenshot - paste in
- Drag&drop files in (youtube has pretty good sense on how easily files should go in)

- Enable database connection to receive data from server with sql sentence
- Use data in sql table to run parametric model

- Keep everything organized, filters and search (filename, type, date, tag, etc.), thumbnails/preview for all type of (common) files. Maybe even redo horizontal tabs to Part studios, Assemblies, Imported data, Database connections, Images, Favorites, Newest, Most viewed and have vertical list on each.

andrew_troup

So, as I understand it, @3dcad, your bold suggestion would have master tabs for major categories across the bottom of the model space, with a vertical 'tree' of subtabs growing out of each 'pot' when you hover over it?

I like that, a lot.

I, too, am a major fan of copy and paste ... and as well as the cases you mention, I would like to see it extended to sketch geometry, hopefully with a more elegant and better-documented way of pasting varying levels of internal constraints and dimensioning than Solidworks ever managed. 
Maybe it could be along the lines of MS Office "Paste Special", or their other Paste functionality with a popup of options...

I also would like Onshape to entertain the idea of using copy & paste as a way of inserting parts from a studio into assemblies in the same document. (This was an undocumented feature of Solidworks which I found to be a timesaver, because you can pre-select the part from the 'push' end, which is often where you tend to be when deciding to add a particular part to an assembly, rather than "pulling" it from the assembly, as you do with "Insert" - which means having to trot off and find the part)

3dcad

@andrew_troup You got my point exactly, I would like to find parts, assemblies, etc. always in same place on bottom of the screen. I find it rather hard to navigate currently if having 10+ mixed tabs.

Paste special would be a great idea, it just feels inconvenient to manually copy things from program to another or at worse case - inside same program.
I also like the idea of pushing parts (copy-paste) into assembly.

I liked also the way of copying in early 2d software where you press a button and drag. Or windows like drag with RMB and it will open dialog: Copy here, Move here, Cancel. Sometimes it would be handy to do this kind of copying in Feature, Part and Tab list.

When Onshape grows it's feature base to meet the standard cad, they should always keep things consistent. RMB menu should be same in part list and picking a part from screen. If I can drag copy in feature list, I should be able to do same in part list and tab list. I think you got the point; so that if you memorize how to do something, it's same workflow across the software. 

andrew_troup

@3dcad

I like the idea of an RMB drag bringing up a context-sensitive set of choices when you drop the dragged item (just as it does in Windows). It's a very efficient interface for "Paste Special" type interactions, but it would also be handy for the simple case, using the default option of "Copy"

Particularly valuable, I think, if it turns out that Onshape cannot adopt the Control-Drag convention to copy (because of "browser hijack" in Safari, IIRC)  

Thanks for bringing that up!

andrew_troup

And as for consistency: I quite agree. It was perhaps the single most inspired (and rigidly enforced) aspect of the original Apple Mac guidelines for software developers, and I think it had a lot to do with their enduring success.

When you walk into a darkened room, you want the lightswitch not just to be the same "sign" (up/down) as in all other rooms, but you want it the same height off the floor, the same setback from the door jamb, the same size and configuration of button, etc etc... 

Consistency trumps unique solutions, optimised for each room. Even though they look dead sexy in design magazines ...

dennis_20

dennis_20 said:

Will the feature requests we submit as tickets ever get public visibility so we can see what each other is requesting?

@lougallo, Can you update us on when/how you'll be organizing the public viewing of the wish-list items?  I've seen many references and requests for this.

lisa_dohogne

dennis_20 said:

dennis_20 said:

Will the feature requests we submit as tickets ever get public visibility so we can see what each other is requesting?

@lougallo, Can you update us on when/how you'll be organizing the public viewing of the wish-list items?  I've seen many references and requests for this.

I'd like to know the status of that as well.