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Investing in Onshape's Foundation: Focus on Stability and Performance for the Next Two Releases

Vajrang_ParvateVajrang_Parvate Member, Onshape Employees Posts: 10

Hello Onshape Community,

We have an important update about our upcoming releases. As you know, we've been committed to delivering new features and improvements every three weeks, and we greatly appreciate your enthusiasm and feedback. In just the past 6 or so months, we have released:

  • Onshape AI Advisor
  • Onshape Government for ITAR/EAR needs
  • CAM Studio
  • Powerful core modeling enhancements such as: constrained surfaces, routing curve, edit curve, sketch constraints manager, curve approximation, loft/boundary surface improvements, flatten surfaces, many sheet metal enhancements, ...
  • FeatureScript performance and usability enhancements to make it easier and faster to create custom features
  • A completely re-architected Render Studio, and many workflow improvements following the re-architecture
  • A great leap forward in Drawings: Constrained sketching, support for many new types of drawing views, automatic centermarks, datum attachments, inspection tables, …
  • Many UX and quality of life improvements: universal keyboard shortcuts, dark mode, cosmetic threads, reference repair, config parameter visibility, Product Structure View, …
  • Product areas like Data and Release Management, and Enterprise Analytics
  • And of course, many performance improvements in multiple areas of the product

We've also been listening closely to your feedback regarding performance, robustness, and addressing issues. To ensure Onshape continues to be a stable and reliable platform for your critical design work, we've made the strategic decision to dedicate the next two releases entirely to addressing technical debt and improving the overall user experience.

What does this mean?

Over the next two Onshape releases, we will be turning our attention to:

  • Addressing reported issues: prioritizing those that cause the most significant disruptions to your workflows
  • Architectural improvements: making core changes in several areas that will enable us to deliver even more powerful and innovative features in future releases
  • Technical Debt: Look closer at areas of the product that are in need of refactoring and can benefit internal workflows for teams such as QA, Support, Documentation and Technical Operations

Why are we doing this?

We believe that investing in Onshape's foundation is essential for its long-term health and your continued success. By addressing these underlying areas, we're not just fixing user-reported issues; we're strengthening the core of Onshape to create a more stable and efficient platform that will empower you to design with greater confidence.

What to expect in the upcoming releases:

  • A somewhat leaner list of feature enhancements (as listed in the What’s New posts)
  • But a longer changelog that will list all the details highlighting the specific issues and performance improvements implemented
  • We'll share selected "behind-the-scenes" technical updates to give you insight into the work done

We understand that you may be eager for new features, and we want to assure you that this is a temporary shift in focus. We are committed to returning to our regular cadence of feature releases after these two foundational releases.

We value your feedback and appreciate your understanding as we work to make Onshape even better and thank you for being part of the Onshape community.

Vajrang Parvate

SVP, Onshape Product and R&D

Comments

  • eric_pestyeric_pesty Member Posts: 2,143 PRO

    More companies need to do this! This reminds me of a certain "other" CAD company where some users where advocating for one year with zero new features and just bug fixes instead but it never happened…
    Looking forward to "behind the scenes" peek as well!

  • robert_stilesrobert_stiles Member Posts: 128 PRO

    If this paves the way for some powerful configuration logic controls (suppression by expression, between tables etc. ) we are happy…

  • victor_mendoza099victor_mendoza099 Member Posts: 6 ✭✭

    I’m sure that these will be the best updates

    Excellent shift !!!

  • GWS50GWS50 Member Posts: 446 PRO

    Excellent… as Eric has said other companies would benefit greatly from this approach.

    This is most encouraging that the foundation of Onshape is being given this attention, thank you

  • martin_kopplowmartin_kopplow Member Posts: 756 PRO

    In the long term, it is usually a good idea to get the base straight first.

  • bryan_lagrangebryan_lagrange Member, User Group Leader Posts: 862 ✭✭✭✭✭

    This is why Onshape is the new standard in CAD.

    Bryan Lagrange
    Twitter: @BryanLAGdesign

  • fnxffnxf Member, User Group Leader Posts: 145 PRO

    Very good decision! Like @bryan_lagrange says, this is why you are the best.

    Reminds me of this:

    snow-leopard-0-new-features.jpg

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard

  • Nick_HolzemNick_Holzem Member Posts: 144 PRO

    @Vajrang_Parvate Our team at Trek is very excited for this, excited for more details!!

  • Rhett_RobinsonRhett_Robinson Member Posts: 148 PRO

    Thanks for the heads up @Vajrang_Parvate, I appreciate all that the Onshape team does for us!

  • Caden_ArmstrongCaden_Armstrong Member Posts: 259 PRO
    edited April 23

    2 whole releases for technical debt sounds amazing.
    I'm excited to see a release notes like:

    image.png
    www.smartbenchsoftware.com --- fs.place --- Renaissance
    Custom FeatureScript and Onshape Integrated Applications
  • ben_partouchben_partouch Member, csevp Posts: 157 PRO

    I waited a long time for an announcement like this.

    I think any power user will prefer less bells and whistles and much more reliability.

    This is great, and I hope OS will do this more often.

    🙏

  • vondes_vodesvondes_vodes Member Posts: 5 ✭✭
    edited April 28

    Absolutely the right move. As much as we all love shiny new features, none of that matters if the foundation isn’t solid. Prioritising performance and reliability is what keeps long-term users happy — something I’ve seen firsthand in crypto as well. In that space, the most effective platforms don’t just chase trends, they focus on their core community. That niche audience — passionate, clued-in — makes all the difference. If you're curious how that looks in action, take a look at readfi.io.

  • Derek_Van_Allen_BDDerek_Van_Allen_BD Member Posts: 28 PRO

    When you say architectural improvements for more powerful features, will that be on the internal engine side of things or on the open source featurescript side of things?

    I'm imagining something like the improvements made to the hole tool last year which expanded capabilities but also deprecated useful functionality which hasn't returned to the feature yet. Blind-in-last is still missed by my team.

  • Vajrang_ParvateVajrang_Parvate Member, Onshape Employees Posts: 10

    will that be on the internal engine side of things or on the open source featurescript side of things?

    The work we're doing is not specific to FeatureScript, but system-wide in areas that need some stabilization after the number of large features we shipped in the past 6 or so months.

  • aeromorrisonaeromorrison Member Posts: 56 PRO

    Yes. This is a great idea. Any product needs investment into technical debt and underlying systems/processes. Very important work.

  • MDesignMDesign Member Posts: 769 ✭✭✭

    I've noticed this as well with sketching spline vs bezier. Spline you have to right click and confirm. to finish it. and bezier you have to press the escape key to finish it. if you right click and click escape bezier it erases what you just did

  • MichaelPascoeMichaelPascoe Member Posts: 2,256 PRO

    This sounds fantastic. And what an excellent example of good communication with the Onshape community. Ty for the update!


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