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Export All Data
For company purposes, they want to archive all finished projects on a separate internal hard drive. Is it possible to export an entire document (.zip for example). Preferably convert all of the 3D geometry into IGES/STEP/etc (or Solidworks if possible). All other files stay the same (jpeg, pdf, etc). Even if it takes a long time, I don't mind, I'm just hoping that I don't have to export each "file" individually. I do understand that I will lose the design tree, etc. but the purpose is just to have an additional copy for archive records within the company. Let me know your thoughts and if there is a better way of going about this. Thanks!
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Here's a help page that describes our API better than I can:
https://dev-portal.onshape.com/help
This is the easiest way to batch-export things from Onshape, and you could even write a program that automatically grabs all your parts/assemblies from Onshape, zips them up, and stores them in your vault by document! (No manual work for you in the long run)
As far as the UI goes, there is no current way to export an entire document as a .zip file.
What we did is paid CADSharpcaden_armstrong) to develop a tool that exports all the PDFs and STEPs upon release approval. They get ingested directly into our Dropbox account (following the company export rules to name the files).
Here’s the post that Onshape did when it was released.
https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/17752/improvements-to-onshape-february-18th-2022/p1
Ah ok, thanks. Unfortuantely I need to export STEP from multiple documents, rather than parts within one document..
As I had done for Lucas, a custom onshape app can export from Onshape in pretty much any form you want.
Manually select documents, or export referenced documents (ie assemblies and components), or any document when release or versions get made, etc.
You could export to local drives, dropbox, one drive, browser downloads.
Its part of the challenge of making a one size fits all solution, not every company has the same workflow. But the Onshape API is great and gives enough options that you can find a solution that will work for you.
If you haven't already, I would check out a web application called retool. It allows making api calls to anything. It has a huge selection of components like tables, buttons and other things you can drag and drop onto a canvas allowing users to interact easily with the data collected from the api calls. All you need to learn is a little bit of basic JavaScript so you can process the incoming JSON data from the api calls. I currently use it to process and archive everything we send to MFG. I'm using it to pull in product BOM data and reprocess it into a more palatable format and user experience. for example, a BOM view that automatically shows a total of all materials used rather then a total of all the individual parts. It allows users to assign drawings to items right within the BOM layout and then click a button to generate a single PDF document that contains the production BOM with images and all the required drawings for all the items in the BOM in one go. I have found retool extremely flexible and powerful. Have yet to encounter a desire to automate something and not been able to craft something in retool to make it happen. And, you get five users for free with no time limit so no stress while trying to learn the system effectively.
The other solutions may have filled our need. Where I work, many of the people needing to interact with a productivity system like this are, shall I say, much less then computer savvy. I gently broached the subject years ago and it was clear people simply were not going to be receptive or understand what all the benefits could be. I went with retool because it allowed me to immediately provide productivity to the people in my direct sphere and at the same time, sneak in a few extra easy to use abilities that the skepticals would immediately find useful. Like totaling materials making it very simple for sales to cost out projects. I find with these "build it your self" type systems, your able to create something that is right to the point, right off the top. Where there are not a bunch of other possibly confusing abilities that get in the way of computer sensitive individuals sense of usefulness. When people are immediately confused by a computer system they immediately get grumpy and feel like someone is trying to stuff something down there throat.
I searched on "onshape" on their site and didn't find any hooks so I'm wondering how you get OS into reboot? Can you share this process?
I too have had problems with downstream processes in organizations. In my last job, when they were converting to agile cloud, I attended a meeting to discuss the rest protocols. They called me a linux lover and never invited me back. I was able to make friends with the VP of web development and he helped a lot. They set me up with a server on google when everyone else was mysql and running locally.
They say the cloud is here, but it's taking a long time to adapt.
First step for me was discovering I had to login to the onshape developer portal using an admin enabled account. From there, I created a new app and started out by creating an API key and a secret key. It was simpler at the start to use keys for authenticating with the onshape API. Thing to note when using keys, the keys are registered to the account that created them so if you intend to interact with the API to create or modify things, onshape will register that the change was made by that account. Meaning, even if another user is using the retool app, the changes they make will not be recorded in onshape as them having made them. I have not had the need yet because our app is mainly pulling data out of onshape but you can enable an oAuth2 authentication which by my understanding, will allow onshape to record which user made the change even though the change came through the retool app. I can share more on how our process is setup if you need. I am just not positive in what areas you are struggling right now.