Webinar | Jon Hirschtick: "Why A New Generation Of CAD"

dan_1 · December 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKqDNCxqgdM

mark_biasotti · December 2014

Sorry I could not attend in person Jon but just caught up on this recording Sunday evening (like most of the stuff I don't get to during my hectic "time and materials" work week) First off, great presentation both of you (Joe). I like your observation about how in the later years its been less about modeling and more about data management. You would not have convinced me of this while I was at Dassault, but I can tell you that now that I am working at a Product Design Consultancy, this is one of our top issues. We have moved three times in the last 4 months and have finally landed in our permanent studio and finally have a server up and running for SW and ProE. but during that transition, we were using (and still do to some extent) Box and GrabCAD to manage our work and collaborate with our clients. Now we use our server but still post all our work for our Clients and Vendors on Box. While I was trying to collaborate with my design team using Box with the Local Sync, it was a nightmare, because we were routinely overwriting each others work (When you sync in Box there is no Windows File locking and GrabCad download is not much better since it screws up external references when downloading a copy.) It became an annoying constant yelling across the studio "Mark, do you have the main assembly open? can you please close it so I can work?"
As a fast moving consultancy for Silicon Valley startup consumer products, we collaborate with our clients and vendors constantly. We try to keep our projects individual (to a single designer) but because of the demand of the startups to move so quickly, we often have to divide the work up amongst 2 or 3 engineers and this is becoming more the trend.
I'm usually tasked with executing the master model (no surprise) and this works well because I can work isolated from my team and then when I want them to pull my latest update of the master (to their derive parts) I can notify them or update their parts while they are not working on them. To be complete, OS needs to incorporate the concept of Derive parts. It doesn't even have to do with MCAD structure but more to do with authorship and a very proper and sound way of working - especially in consumer products.
As far as the cloud, you know this is something that I was very hesitant about while at Dassault (partly because of the way they (we) dealt with it) but now there is no convincing me - that ship as sailed for all of us in so many aspects of our lives and there is no turning back. Not a single client of ours has ever raise the issue that we post CAD on Box our GrabCAD and they are all with us on this issue. We even do our time management (time cards) on Harvest (Cloud-based) and can do it from my iPhone if I've forgotten an entry for a client.
Anyway, I wanted to shout out to you and team that you are ABSOLUTELY HEADED IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION. I also like the straightforward, honest and no nonsense approach that you are taking in your business model - the customer will really appreciate that.
The challenge that is left, is getting OS to the right threshold of functionality were we can actually start using it with our clients. Drawings is top of the list but there is much more; materials and MP, equations, some sketch entities and constraints etc.
Oh and if you are going to be true to the that statement of "everyone working together with CAD anywhere, anytime" you will need to deal with the reality that there is not wifi everywhere we go in our week. I firmly agree that online should be the norm, but one or two bandwidth interruptions in my week is enough to be a deal breaker - can you believe that I got a call from my client on thanksgiving day to get some data to our Taiwan tooler and I was not near a connection! I know you guys and gals are smart enough to deal with this issue....

Mark

pete_yodis · December 2014

@mbiasotti Amen. I have dealt with the complexities of file management for a 12 plus person engineering department in a small to medium size manufacturer for 13 years now (PDMWorks WorkGroup and now EPDM). The approach of Onshape for management of designs is exactly what users need (whether they realize it or not yet - most don't yet). There is so much overhead of current CAD that someone like myself has to deal with on a daily basis, particularly in a quick moving design phase - as well as later with changes to products. The shackles need to be taken off and Onshape will definitely do that. They really got this right as the whole very basis of the product. Kudos. They are pretty unique at the moment. I think most CAD will move this way because it has to in order for companies to be efficient. For most, there is a mental block that is mostly fear driven (from both customers and CAD companies). For the rest of us - it will be great to work this way soon. The others will come around when they see the light. Things are changing quickly...

https://forum.solidworks.com/message/407582#407582 (There are some of us on the SolidWorks forums that were asking for this).

Research_01 · December 2014

The link on this on the two machines I use OS on does not work "If you are seeing this message, it's probably because you are on an unrecognized computer." I have tried to find the video in the help as it says "Or, log in to cad.onshape.com and visit this video in the Help section,
available in the top right corner under the Question Mark (?)." but no luck. Help?

Research_01 · December 2014

Huh, clicking the link a few more times and shutting down windows got me in... maybe I was not holding my tongue right...

lougallo · December 2014

@Ben you just need to visit onshape.com and put in your email and it should be working. I clear my cookies every session but it seemed to work when I went there. It will be much easier when the NDA is lifted.

Research_01 · December 2014

It's kinda funny thinking about this. Before it used to be "shut down the app and re-start it to see if that fixes things". Now the OS line is 'have you cleared your cookies recently?"

jon_hirschtick · January 2015

@mbiasotti‌ Thanks for your comments Mark. It is very gratifying to hear you in particular endorse that we are headed in the right direction! And please know that we are trying hard to build out our functionality set -- each day we get closer. This is one of the reasons we have tried to stay quiet in the general marketplace.

Also glad you like our business model. We're trying to design details now about how it will be implemented, look, work, etc -- looking forward to UX testing it with some of you.

Webinar | Jon Hirschtick: "Why A New Generation Of CAD"

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