Improvements to Onshape - June 15th, 2018

bradley_sauln

In this latest update we have made improvements across multiple aspects of Onshape. A lot of these updates have been driven by the improvement requests sent in by you, our customers. If you have improvement requests, please submit your ideas here. Let us know what you think.

CAD IMPROVEMENTS

WORKING IN SHEET METAL FLAT PATTERN

You can now create sketches and features in the sheet metal flat pattern. This allows users to simultaneously design their sheet metal in both the flat and folded state.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/qw8qo0xyuw

INCLUDE VISIBLE SKETCHES IN FLAT PATTERN EXPORT

Another improvement to sheet metal with this update is the option to include visible sketches when exporting a sheet metal flat pattern as a DXF or DWG. This can be useful if you need etching lines in your flat pattern for Production.

OVERRIDE TESSELLATION SETTINGS

You can now control the tessellation quality of parts in a Part Studio for when you are performing small, detailed designs or visually checking tolerances and fit. This part property is configurable so you can change part configurations in assemblies to low resolution when working and high resolution when making images.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/v0nyyuye2r

MATING HUD TOOLBAR

Mating workflow speed is now improved with a HUD toolbar that appears next to your cursor to quickly change mate types and orientation. This also allows for rapidly chaining together the creation of multiple mates in a row.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/4f687ijsrm

PROCESS MULTIPLE DOCUMENT TABS

The tab manager now has expanded capabilities for sorting Document tabs and processing multiple tabs at the same time. This can be useful when reorganizing projects.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/8lc1k0np1k

API EXPLORER IMPROVEMENTS

Developers will now see an updated API Explorer environment with this release. The UI has been updated and the performance of the explorer has been improved for loading time and responses. API keys are now required for all calls through the API Explorer.

PROFESSIONAL FEATURES

UPDATE DRAWING PROPERTIES ON RELEASE

Drawings that have been approved in a release workflow now show 'Drawing approved by' and 'Drawing approved date' properties in a drawing note.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/04q9vionxw

ABILITY TO HAVE TEAMS AS APPROVERS

You can now select teams as approvers in the release candidate workflow. When selecting a team as an approver, the release occurs when any one member of the team approves it.

AUTOMATICALLY OBSOLETE PREVIOUS REVISION

The release workflow is more streamline with the company setting to automatically obsolete a previous revision when a new release is approved for an object.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/0bxyl3gj6f

ENTERPRISE FEATURES

INTELLIGENT TEAM SELECTION IN PROJECTS AND SHARING DIALOGS

In the Document sharing dialog and Onshape Enterprise Project dialog, Onshape will now suggest teams to select as you type in their names just like when selecting individuals.

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.

sebastian_glanzner

Thanks for adding tesselation settings!!! 

brucebartlett

Awesome, cutting the flat pattern is perfect, just what I have been waiting for.  Also off to update my Title Blocks to include the approved by and approved by date. 

Thanks, Team!

terry_pipkin

Nice improvements keep the sheet metal upgrades coming.

jammie_logan871

thanks for adding the lines in the sheet metal as our company uses shear bending to form a bend and corner relief it was hard to show it thanks for listening.

brucebartlett

I have worked out how to create the sketch on the flat pattern but can not get it to select to do an extrude remove. Am I missing something?

sebastian_glanzner

Thanks for including the option to export the flat pattern without center bend lines!

This solved my improvement request from October 2017 (which was declined at that time) 

Jason_S

@brucebartlett
Your document isn't upgraded yet. It will work when the upgrade is done. 

brucebartlett

Jason_S said:

@brucebartlett
Your document isn't upgraded yet. It will work when the upgrade is done. 

Thanks, yes it works in the brand new document. Sorry, it was kind of throwing me that the sketch worked but the extrude didn't work. 

The implementation here is brilliant, I love how it just pushes across to the model, I am really excited to see this feature come in. 

owen_sparks

Very nice, thanks folks.

Cache_River_Mill

Tessellation settings... This is perfect!

Thank you!!

Andrew_Enslow_3DS

Thanks! I usually pick my top 3, but I can't choose between all of these streamlining updates!

SledDriver

Tessellation - been waiting a while for this. Nice implementation. Thanks so much.

Sheet metal flat patterns - genius.

Cheers

bruce_williams

nice bunch of improvements!  I just needed sketch on flat pattern and been longing for multi-tab management.  Outstanding!

philip_thomas

@sebastian_glanzner - glad you like it!

We never 'decline' an improvement request

All requests from all users are tallied and all enhancement requests from Pro users are tracked by user.
If in aggregate, a request gets a lot of hits/votes, it moves up.
If we spot a pattern amongst Pro users, it moves up.

Sometimes there are prerequisites that we know we have to do first.
Just to tease you - of the top two enhancements in our system today, one is blocked by a significant behind-the-scenes piece of work that is being worked on now and the other (which will take multiple sprints), is also being actively worked on. Why am telling you this - because it's important to always submit requests (especially as a Pro user). Tell us if it's a 'need' (i cant do this any other way), a 'want' (there is a work around, but i really want this as its would be so much better), or a 'nice to have'.

We are glad that you like this release - a lot of people worked hard and there are always late-nights to get these to you every 3 weeks.

Please tell your friends at other companies as well as your customers and suppliers about Onshape !!!

billy2

Thumbs up for the API update.

Looks really good and fixed the bug I reported a long time ago (d references any document, not just the current one).

derek_ward

Awesome updates per usual.

emagdalenaC2i

Awesome update!!!
I love the sheet metal improvements... but I miss some improments in Drawings

emagdalenaC2i

Just a simple question...
Why 'approved by' and 'approved date' properties are only for Drawings?
Some companies also will want to set the approved date and approved by for their Parts, Assemblies, and Part Studios

emagdalenaC2i

En este enlace podéis ver las Novedades de Onshape en español:
https://youtu.be/QLgJQ05LhnU

Brian_McVeigh

Thanks for the tessellation settings!  If I up the settings on a large assembly/part studio what will the performance limiting factor be?  Hardware on user end (and graphics or cpu?), internet connection speed, or will it be limited on the server side?

owen_sparks

Hi Folks.

I really like the new matey-gizmo-HUD but with one exception.

In everything Onshape a green icon with a white tick is "accept current action", but here the enter key does that and the same icon starts a new instance.

I love the new instance option but not with that icon.

Could I suggest the the current icon just accept the current mate and then stops, and a new icon (maybe the same check but with an additional horizontal arrow) accepts the current mate and moves onto another one?

Cheers,

Owen S.

NeilCooke

@Brian_McVeigh the only difference is the number of triangles that must be sent and rendered. There will be a slight hit in the "loading graphics" phase and frames per second during rotation will be lower depending upon the graphics hardware. Nice thing is that you can selectively choose which parts have higher tessellation, so the performance hit is not exponential.

rachel_arden

emagdalenaC2C 

From my understanding this is a new use of the metadata, not an introduction of the feature. Parts, Assemblies and Drawings can all be released, and the releases will record who and when approved it. This update is so that this data (who and when) can now appear and be updated on a drawing when it is released, without having to manually put it in before hand. 

mike_hölscher

Really needed the flat editing! The implementation is not what I expected but we'll see how it turns out.
First remarks:

- Is there no origin in flat sheet metal view?
- Fullscreen mode for flat editing?

philip_thomas

@mike_hölscher  - your suggestion of a 'full screen mode' is a good one - thank you.

Re an origin - because the layout of the flat is entirely dependent on which edges are open and which are bends, it would not be a good idea to dimension to an origin as the faces could change position relative to it.

Jake_Rosenfeld

@mike_hölscher

Yes, there is no origin in the sheet metal flat view.  Since the sheet metal flat patterns can move around in that area (if additional parts are created by splitting parts, or joined together with a tab) the global coordinate system actually ends up being less useful than you would think.  References should be made to geometry of the part you are sketching on.

There is no direct fullscreen for the sheet metal flat view, but you can grab the dividers and slide them around to make the page look closer to what you want:

mike_hölscher

@Jake_Rosenfeld and @philip_thomas
Thanks for the replies and clarification. I now understand about the origin. I will change my modelling approach with this in mind.
I was doing the exact thing Jake shows in the screenshot. But since my sketch on the flat is like my master sketch with lots of stuff on it I would like to take advantage of my whole screen, and not keep on wasting time dragging dividers back and forth all the time, experimenting with stuff  the master sketch in the flat.

Tony_C_

I like the idea of the new mating quick window.  But shouldn't it have the offset options in there also?   Many of my mates require an offset so I'm still needing to go back to the original old window once I click my 2nd mate.  

bradley_sauln

@Tony_C_ I think we are looking at adding some more controls but also know that we don't want to clutter up your mouse area too much. I would recommend generating an improvement to vote on for that. I've found the following workflow to be particularly fast with the new update:
Going through and setting up all of my mates in a particular assembly/subassembly first. I didn't think the toolbar would be much faster than 'Shift+enter' but while recording the what's new video I was proven wrong.
After all the mates are complete, go back and double-click mates to edit and adjust the positioning and offsets. The mouse travel is reduced from the mates list and mate dialog. Now, I understand that based on the assembly, this is not always an ideal workflow.

lana

@mike_hölscher
I'd like to understand your sheet metal workflow better. Could you please share a screen shot of an a sample sketch/completed part?