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Improvements to Onshape - February 23rd, 2024
Roy_Mutalik
Member, Onshape Employees Posts: 41 
February may be the shortest month of the year, but we're happy to ship to you a second Onshape release this month! Let's take a look at some new features.
SWITCH THE ASSEMBLY CONFIGURATION THAT A CONTEXT IS REFERENCING
ICONS FOR PARAMETER CONTROLS
Custom feature horizontal and drop-down parameter controls can now include icons.
PART STUDIOS
BODY DRAFT
A new feature - Body draft - has been added. Body draft allows you to add draft to one or more entire parts all in one feature, based on selecting a pull direction and a parting surface.BOUNDARY SURFACE - MATCH CURVATURE
The Boundary surface feature now includes a new Boundary condition option to Match curvature. This maintains curvature continuity (G2 Continuity) between the created surface and reference surface.AREA MOMENTS OF INERTIA
You can now evaluate the Area moment of inertia of a selected face (or multiple selected coplanar faces), directly from the Mass properties dialog.ADDITIONAL SKETCH TOOLS NOW SUPPORT DIMENSIONING ON THE FLY
The 3 point circle, Tangent arc, Inscribed polygon, and Circumscribed polygon sketch features now support a more efficient dimension-on-the-fly workflow. You no longer have to manually select the dimension tool to create a dimension; instead, key in a value immediately after the sketch geometry is created and press Enter to accept it.
ASSEMBLIES
SWITCH THE ASSEMBLY CONFIGURATION THAT A CONTEXT IS REFERENCING
When editing a part in-context of an Assembly, you can now change which Assembly Configuration your context is referencing.
FEATURESCRIPT
ICONS FOR PARAMETER CONTROLS
Custom feature horizontal and drop-down parameter controls can now include icons.
IMPORT/EXPORT
STEP EXPORT - NEW PREPROCESSING OPTION FOR SURFACES
A new Preprocessing option is now supported for STEP file format export. This option is the same as the Remove small entities only (advanced) option, with the additional step where all surfaces are converted to b-surfaces.IGES IMPORT - POSTPROCESSING
A new option for IGES postprocessing has been added upon import. This option ensures that linear edges are not imported as curves.RELEASE MANAGEMENT IMPROVEMENTS
VIEW PERMISSIONS NOTIFICATION FOR APPROVERS
You will now receive a notification if you add an approver to a Release candidate but they do not have permission to view the document containing the release.LEARNING CENTER IMPROVEMENTS
ONSHAPE-ARENA CONNECTION - USER AND ADMIN GUIDESTwo new guides have been added to the Learning Center, containing lessons and best practices around using the Onshape Arena Connection:
The Onshape Arena Connection Admin Guide explains how to configure your Onshape Enterprise to synchronize data with Arena PLM. This article is recommended for Onshape Enterprise Admins.
The Onshape Arena Connection User Guide focuses on the core functionality of the Onshape Arena Connection. It explains how to use the connection to assign categories, generate part numbers, synchronize data, add an Onshape release to an Arena Change, and automatically upload PDF and STEP data to Arena PLM. This article is recommended for all Onshape Arena Connection users.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. Over the next few days, these features will also be available in Documents created before this update.5
Comments
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That body draft will be pretty neat to use! I have a casting design to work on right now that will definitely utilize this on.2
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G2 boundary surface conditions - I've wanted this one for quite a while, Thank you
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Body draft is a bit of a weird one. It solves some things that I would have had to use Isocline (or some of the custom features that predated that) plus some parting line drafts to achieve in the past. There doesn't seem to be a way to remove material from a part by adding draft, only add material, but it can do that interesting ways. Here's the first one that's kinda helpful. I started with a sphere where its equator is on the top plane:
If you are already using @Evan_Reese's Selection Draft, then I'm not sure that drafting a whole part is that great since I can't seem to find a way to remove material.Simon Gatrall | Product Development, Engineering, Design, Onshape | Ex- IDEO, PCH, Unagi, Carbon | LinkedIn
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that draft body tool looks especially useful
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I was just computing moments of inertia by hand for custom extrusions. Love that it's built in now.0
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Another new addition of improvements. Great job!!
En este enlace podéis ver las Novedades de Onshape en español:
https://youtu.be/t5g6BVgayQA
Un saludo,
Eduardo Magdalena C2i Change 2 improve ☑ ¿Por qué no organizamos una reunión online?
Partner de PTC - Onshape Averigua a quién conocemos en común0 -
Hi S1mon,S1mon said:Body draft is a bit of a weird one. It solves some things that I would have had to use Isocline (or some of the custom features that predated that) plus some parting line drafts to achieve in the past. There doesn't seem to be a way to remove material from a part by adding draft, only add material, but it can do that interesting ways. Here's the first one that's kinda helpful. I started with a sphere where its equator is on the top plane:
If you are already using @Evan_Reese's Selection Draft, then I'm not sure that drafting a whole part is that great since I can't seem to find a way to remove material.
Yes, body draft will only create material. I will probably get this wrong, but I believe under the covers it is finding the isoclines at the desired angles and then creating material to the parting entity (then cleaning up depending on the other options). For completely analytical parts, it is often that regular draft or parting line draft would suffice. As soon as more complex surfaces are involved, I find this approach is needed to make something that is moldable.
Jake RamsleyDirector of Quality Engineering & Release Manager onshape.com3 -
S1mon, the Body draft tool is going to be a deep dive for sure! There are many things to explore (as your screenshot hints at...) As way of a teaser have a look at this:S1mon said:Body draft is a bit of a weird one. It solves some things that I would have had to use Isocline (or some of the custom features that predated that) plus some parting line drafts to achieve in the past. There doesn't seem to be a way to remove material from a part by adding draft, only add material, but it can do that interesting ways. Here's the first one that's kinda helpful. I started with a sphere where its equator is on the top plane:
If you are already using @Evan_Reese's Selection Draft, then I'm not sure that drafting a whole part is that great since I can't seem to find a way to remove material.
non-planar parting entity; non-orthogonal pull direction; matching faces with tangency and repair options.... etc.
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/a1d59beda1d9a7843502709a/w/d1b84336da5008274bd69fa6/e/8e8c05f130003fb3c287790b
I'll be dropping some example ride-alongs on my youtube channel!!
Bonus tip: turn on Draft analysis before you add the Body draft feature - you'll get a nice colorful experience
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Most excited by the sketch quick dimensions as I use these a lot and had been avoiding using the "return to line to create tangent arc" function because of that.
Disappointed to see the slot tool didn't get any love, it really sticks out as the "odd" one now! Here's to hoping this means there's some other more in-depth rework for that one!1 -
@GregBrownI got the sense that there was more to it. As is often the case, the short demos in these improvement posts only touch on the very surface of some of these more complex features.@jakeramsley
"For completely analytical parts, it is often that regular draft or parting line draft would suffice. As soon as more complex surfaces are involved, I find this approach is needed to make something that is moldable."Typically if I have really complex shapes with complex parting lines, they are cosmetic parts and I'm going to want to do careful surfacing to make everything look clean. However if I was doing a lot of complex shapes that were completely mechanical, then this tool could be super helpful. I'm kinda imagining things like linkages with bosses at various places which need to be split along a crazy parting line.I slapped this model together to try out Body Draft a little further, and I can see where it's helpful, but it is surprisingly picky. I couldn't get it to handle a lot of fillets on the model or the bosses all in one go. I could do the main body in one relatively easy step, which is very cool, but again, I would normally design a part like this at MMC, and remove material for draft, not add to it. I needed to add most of the little fillets after the draft.Simon Gatrall | Product Development, Engineering, Design, Onshape | Ex- IDEO, PCH, Unagi, Carbon | LinkedIn
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Area Moment of Inertia! Finally! I'll be using this weekly for sure. Hopefully more mass/area properties are on the development roadmap as well. This has been a weaker area of Onshape compared with other tools.
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Area Moment of Inertia, been waiting for this one. Thank you!
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Great update again! Thx! Dimensionnig on the fly, love it!0
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Moment of Inertia is HUGE! Thank you!
I love Onshape because you actively make it nicer for developers and the end user. I recommend it to all of my friends.1 -
SWITCH THE ASSEMBLY CONFIGURATION THAT A CONTEXT IS REFERENCING. Yes. This is a good one I have needed but never thought to ask for!
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Quality improvements team! It's improvements like these that make Onshape the GOAT
I especially like:- Icons for parameter controls
- Body draft
- Boundary surface - match curvature
RENDERCAD
rendercad.ai - Photorealistic product rendering.
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Great updates. I have been waiting for the area moments of inertia. This will be very helpful.0
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Lots of nice updates! 🙏
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Now we just need the ability to switch the context to a different version/branch...shawncrocker said:SWITCH THE ASSEMBLY CONFIGURATION THAT A CONTEXT IS REFERENCING. Yes. This is a good one I have needed but never thought to ask for!
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Match curvature for Boundary surface is great, been waiting a long time for this. Now we just need to add guides for both U and V direction and we're golden.
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Good stuff...
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Thank you for Body Draft! Great tool for us plastics design folks!1
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+1 draft!0
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@bryan_lagrange Yes, we need sheet metal loft 😀2
