Improvements to Onshape - January 31st, 2025

NeilCooke · January 21

The second update of 2025 introduces integrated cloud-native CAM, sheet metal forms, and a raft of improvements to drawings.

CAM STUDIO (BETA)

CAM Studio is now available to all Onshape Professional and Enterprise commercial subscribers.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/u0alsll49b

PART STUDIOS

SHEET METAL FORM

You can now create form features, such as louvers, bridge lances, slot embosses, extrudes, and punches on existing sheet metal models. In addition, you can create your own library of custom forms, and this release ships with a set of forms to get you started in the Onshape sheet metal forms library.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/ayrjzorcjc?embedType=web_component&seo=true&videoWidth=640

SKETCH CHAMFER

A new Chamfer tool in sketch enables the quick addition of chamfers between entities.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/s3k9hx6htc?embedType=web_component&seo=true&videoWidth=960

DRAWINGS

PARAMETRIC SKETCHING

Lines, circles, and points added to a Drawing sheet can now be constrained and dimensioned relative to drawing view geometry.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/leaja4dgyn?embedType=web_component&seo=true&videoWidth=960

STACKED CALLOUTS

Callouts can now be stacked to detail groups of related parts or parts within close proximity of each other.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/etsoicbka5?embedType=web_component&seo=true&videoWidth=960

DETAIL VIEW BORDER

The border of a Detail view may now be shown clipped to the view geometry for added clarity.

CUSTOM KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

All commands in Drawings can now be assigned custom keyboard shortcuts.

EXCLUDE OFF SHEET CONTENT

Off sheet content can now be excluded when exporting drawings in DWG, DXF, or DWT file formats.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/aaldxsps3x?embedType=web_component&seo=true&videoWidth=960

RELEASE MANAGEMENT

ADD ITEMS TO OBSOLETION

Multiple objects from the same document or from other documents can now be grouped and obsoleted together, reducing the number of steps required and creating an association between obsoleted items for audit purposes.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5022071/uploads/editor/ek/9k3l5tz93p3r.gif

LEARNING CENTER

INTRODUCTION TO CAM STUDIO

A brand new course, Introduction to CAM Studio, is now available on the Learning Center to coincide with the release of CAM Studio. Learn how to build a machining job in CAM Studio and preview real-time tool paths, back plotting, and machine-accurate simulation.

INTRODUCTION TO PARAMETRIC FEATURE-BASED CAD

The Introduction to Parametric Feature-Based CAD course has been completely reworked and updated with new content and examples to help new users get up to speed with the concepts of 3D CAD.

LOCALIZATION

In our continued efforts to expand our localized offerings, full French audio has been added to the Self-Guided Onshape Bootcamp.

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.

Nick_Holzem · January 31

A lot of long standing requests here, keep them coming! Drawing sketching, detail view boarder clipping, and remove permanently delete global permission for workspace deletion (change log). Building an obsoletion change is also going to save some time on occasion. Nice work!!

eric_pesty · January 31

Wow!
Pretty sure I'll be using all the drawing improvements. Seems a bit trivial compared to some of the other stuff but cropping the detail view outline might be my favourite.
Also sheet metal forms, we've had a functional workflow for these but this looks way nicer!

EDIT: had sort of skipped over the obsoletion as I read it to mean it only applied to the "virtual part" kind of items but that will also be really nice!

Lucas_Kuhns · January 31

Very happy about sketching on drawings!

andrew_kelly561 · January 31

Brilliant so much to get excited about in one update. Nice work team.

Andrew_Card · January 31

Are there plans to make CAM available to Education/Classroom users? At least in a stripped down form that could do 2/2.5d operations.

Cedric_Eveleigh · January 31

Please keep putting resources into CAM. Thanks!

bryan_lagrange · January 31

Parametric sketching in drawings +

Formed features in sheet metal ++

CAM studio released +++

Excellent update. Thank you Onshape Team!

lougallo · January 31

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/113149#Comment_113149

EDU will be addressed with CAM later after some time with commercial customers.

S1mon · January 31

This is one of the most significant releases in a long time. CAM Studio opens up a lot of possibilities and makes Onshape much more competitive against some other CAD tools, although the pricing is quite a bit different. I agree with @Andrew_Card that 2/2.5d CAM for education or standard users would be a huge plus.

I'm looking forward to hacking the form tools to add features for flex PCB details like stiffeners, edge connections and pseudo silkscreens for pin 1. I haven't tried it yet, but since there's a separate add/delete part, it seems pretty powerful.

Parametric sketching in drawings has been a long time coming. Glad that's finally here.

I've never really understood the big deal about sketch chamfers, but it seems well implemented.

Hans_Ole_Leirvik · 4:58AM

Wow wow, this must be the best release ever. Very good , thank you !
Finally after years of waiting, the simple fillet in sketches is here 🙂
I will start using parametric sketching immediately, maybe even update drawing templates.

jbbiomed · 7:12AM

Wow, sheet metal forming, sketching improvements, excluded drawing content, stacked callouts, this stuff will get use from tomorrow. Very happy to see these features finally roll out of production🎇

sebastian_glanzner · 7:39AM

Amazing update! I can't imagine how much work the Onshape team put into this!

maxwell_smart · 8:15AM

Can't wait for the student access to CAM!

GWS50 · 8:43AM

what a fantastic update, full of extremely useful functionality. Can't wait to dig into CAM studio. Drawing tools are a great improvement

martin_farrow · 10:39AM

i cant see the form option in mine ?

NeilCooke · 10:39AM

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/113168#Comment_113168

Please see the footnote in the OP 😁 should be there early next week.

aeromorrison · 12:42PM

Amazing release! I'm looking forward to digging into these updates.

fst · 1:09PM

Great update!
"CAM Studio opens up a lot of possibilities and makes Onshape much more competitive against some other CAD tools, although the pricing is quite a bit different."
Technically yes, practically no, it is not competitive at these prices.

STEG · 2:56PM

👏 👏 👏

Chris_D_Mentes_001 · 3:10PM

This is HUUUUGGGEEEE !! Well Done Holy Molly!
Love all the drawings space improvements, love the keyboiard shortcuts and I've had the CAM for a while now as a BETA tester but nice to see it's hitting the main stream.

I must say I've noticed that the CAM is aimed at metal work for now which I assume is why HOMAG machines have not yet been added to the list. For over a year now I've wondered if I'd ever get a chance to properly test the CAM out so hopefully that is still on the horizon.

Alex_Pitt · 3:50PM

Wonderful update! So good to have a sketcher in drawings!

alexey_kornienkov · 4:13PM

Wow, sheet metal forms at last! Congratulations. That's a really big step for those of us using sheet metal a lot.

michael3424 · 7:23PM

The CAM system seems to be a lot more mature than I would have guessed given where it is in the development cycle.

Is/will there be a utility available to create machine definitions and post processor generation or will these only be available directly from Onshape?

Will TCPC be supported for 5-axis work?