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Improvements to Onshape - March 13th, 2025
Roy_Mutalik
Member, Onshape Employees Posts: 39 
CAD IMPROVEMENTS
COSMETIC THREADS (3D)
When defining a thread using the Hole feature, or External thread feature, cosmetic threads are rendered on-screen in the modeling environment.
ROUTING CURVE
The new Routing curve feature assists with many 3D curve workflows including wire, tube, and pipe routing
CONSTRAINED SURFACE
The new Constrained surface feature allows you to create a surface fit through a series of selected points or defined entirely by a mesh.MOVE BOUNDARY - UP TO WITH OFFSET
The Move boundary feature now allows for an Offset distance to be defined when using any of the "Up to" end conditions.
FRAMES - LOCK PROFILE FACES
The new Lock profile faces option in the Frames feature allows you to lock your frame profile to follow one or more selected faces. This allows you to correctly introduce twist in your frame elements, to accurately follow non-planar curves.
ASSEMBLY SUBFOLDERS
You may now nest folders in the Assembly Instances list, to create assembly subfolders.
EXPAND/COLLAPSE ALL FEATURE FOLDERS
You may now expand or collapse all feature folders in the Part studio Features list and Assembly Instances list in a single click.
EXPORT TO RHINO - SELECT VERSION
When exporting to a .3dm file for Rhino, you can now select what file version to create.
DRAWINGS IMPROVEMENTS
DIMENSION THREADS
You can now directly dimension threads on your Onshape drawings using the Dimension tool.RENDER STUDIO IMPROVEMENTS
ADD TEXTURE TO APPEARANCE - IMPROVED WORKFLOW
The process for applying a custom texture to an appearance has been greatly improved. You may now directly add a bitmap image by right-clicking on an applicable Appearance panel parameter and selecting Use bitmap file from the context menu.
LINK TO PART STUDIO APPEARANCE
A new Appearances list context menu option, Link to Part Studio Appearance, is available. This removes the applied Render Studio appearance, and instead re-link the entity to the original Part Studio appearance.
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.
Comments
This update is a lot to take in. Incredible.
I'm especially excited for:
Can't forget about the quality of life folder improvements too. Those are much appreciated. 🙏
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Well isn't this a very pleasant surprise! Released on a Thursday instead of Friday, and a bunch of things that many people have been asking for for a long time.
Routing curve we've had many previews for, but great to see it in production now. Still looking forward to a more generalized 3D spline tool, but happy to have routing tools.
The constrained surface tool is beyond what I had seen in Plasticity. More reverse engineering tools are very welcome.
The cosmetic thread appearance will make threading a lot easier to understand on unfamiliar parts. And the ability to dimension them in a variety of ways on 2D drawings is very welcome.
One of the biggest quality of life things for me is the ability to collapse and expand all folders with a menu click (and presumably a keyboard shortcut).
Nice to see RenderStudio getting some basic quality of life improvements as well.
Woah! Most all will immediately be beneficial for my line of work. Nice one Onshape, and a day early even. 🤩
I imagine you know more details about this, but I didn't see any mention of the triad manipulator improvement other than this post. It's not in the changelog. Maybe that was an oversight on Onshape's part?
@S1mon Oops, that was from a previous change log that I missed. Still super excited for that!
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It is crazy how these small improvements will make my life easier as a mechanical designer! 👏
I can't pass over in silence the new cosmetic threads… 🏆️
Wow, that cosmetic thread. This is not just a bunch of cosmetic rings (like in SW), but it looks like real thread including the correct pitch and shadowing.
Amazing how many Onshape improvements @EvanReese has inspired.
I think is a very useful update. Especially the constrained surface to replace mesh imports to something way more useful. 😋
The Constrained surface has so many interesting workflows - I'm really looking forward to seeing people get into it. I made this video as a bit of a primer…
The new manipulator has been in FeatureScript for a little while, and is documented https://cad.onshape.com/FsDoc/library.html#module-manipulator.fs
It's called a
fullTriadManipulatorand there's a parameter on itdisplayEditViewthat determines whether you'll see those text boxesTHE CONSTRAINED SURFACE FEATURE IS SO AMAZING FOR THE CURRENT PROJECT I'VE BEEN DOING!!! AND THERE'S SO MUCH TO MENTALLY UNPACK! GLORY TO THE BEST CAD SOFTWARE!
Huge update! Awesome work, Onshape team! I'm looking forward to using many of these features on future projects.
@GregBrown @EvanReese Thank you. Constrained Surface is the bees knees, the cat's meow, and all that and a bag of chips. Did not expect to see that quite this quickly. That is a huge time saver and nearly exactly what I had hoped for from such a feature. One additional tweak would put it over the top. and That is extend the capability to create a perfectly flat surface via a calculated median of point deviations. Just a simple check box or a 3rd tab would suffice.
This tool is going to be crazy useful to many users and save sooooo much time of creating planes, sketches, curves and trial and error. WELL DONE! Move boundary with offset is a nice complimentary tool as well.
Oh good job on the other stuff too. ha
You can consider this IR complete.
DAMN!!,I 've missed the 3D routing curve by A DAY. From now on all my work will get SO MUCH EASIER!!!!
Any one else tried opening the configuration tab following this update?
Its empty for us, but only in some documents? I will raise a bug report, but if any one else has issues please reply
Love the updates. I couldn't help but notice the cosmetic thread was a left hand thread. Please set the default to a right hand thread. For the sake of CAD people not being labelled as out of touch to reality on the shop floor.
Did the selection issue with the Snapdragon X Elite - X1E80100 get resolved in this update? Didn't see it in the changelog.
https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/109877#Comment_109877
This time, I find it hard to even name a favourite! It appears all of the improvements will be immediately useful. I have certainly been running into trouble not having them available before, and I can tick some off my wish list now.
Great one! :0)
🙏 W O W
Sorry, but the cosmetics look right-handed to me.
Fantastic !
Thanks Onshape :-)
Holy Moley! Lots of cool stuff here!
FYI they have identified a bug here, its getting fixed. That is of course the down side of regular updates, especially when you have built a lot of specialist bespoke stuff under the bonnet… As much as I love the regular updates, every now and again they make something fall over that was working before.
The fun thing about cosmetic thread is that its just set on a cylindrical face with a property, so it can be used in custom features.
Custom FeatureScript and Onshape Integrated Applications
It appears a few of my documents with configurated features have only been partially or failed the automatic update process. I have expand/collapse (which is awesome!!) but I am missing cosmetic threads, constrain surface, move boundary, routing curve.. the majority of the update. Will the remaining features be pushed once this bug is fixed?
Caden,
Do you make the CF Public?
And… do you mean Pitch instead of Thread?
Also worth noting, it is not in fact using a decal to do this. But it is being done directly in the shader…
Excellent as always Onshape - constrained surface let's us make another third party piece of expensive software redundant! Great job.
Yes - we believe we've resolved the selection issues on the Snapdragon X Elite GPUs. Please let us know if you find the issue is not resolved.