Improvements to Onshape - January 18th, 2018

Just two weeks since the last update! This update comes with some highly requested improvements to drawings, materials and custom features.

FORESHORTENED RADIUS

Radial dimensions on large concave arcs can now be foreshortened to make your Drawings easier to read. 

ROTATE TEXT IN DRAWINGS

A new rotation drag handle has been added to notes without leaders.

VIEW HIGHLIGHTING IN DRAWINGS

It is now much easier to discover which drawing view a section, detail or auxiliary view came from. The section line, detail circle or auxiliary projection line are now highlighted when you hover your mouse over the view and vice versa.

  

COMPANY-WIDE MATERIAL LIBRARIES

A Company account administrator can now add company-owned material libraries to all user accounts. To enable this, go to "My account" under your profile icon in the top right corner, then "Company", then "Preferences".

DRAG & DROP DOCUMENTS INTO FOLDERS

In the "My Onshape" filter on the Documents Page, you can now drag and drop documents and folders into other folders making it faster and easier to organize your Documents.

IMPORTING SOLID EDGE FILES

You can now import Solid Edge part files (.par) and assembly files (.asm) from version 10 through ST10. To import an assembly, create a ZIP archive file containing all the parts and assemblies, then rename the ZIP file to be the same as the top-level assembly file (for example, if the top-level assembly is called water_pump.asm then your ZIP file should be called water_pump.zip). Then import the ZIP file and Onshape will create the correct assembly structure.

EDIT PART PROPERTIES WITH FEATURESCRIPT

You can now edit part properties using FeatureScript. For example, if your custom feature creates a new part, like a spur gear, you can set its part name to be equal to the module and number of teeth.

The new setProperty function can be used to set any part properties like Name, Part number or Description as well as material and appearance.

In this simple example, a custom feature added at the end of the Feature list can be used to set the name of a part. Because custom features can be configured, you can add each "segment" of the custom Part Number feature to a configuration table and build a new part number based on the configuration selected or variable value entered.



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 and over the next few days these features will also be available in Documents created before the date of this update.