Improvements to Onshape - July 30th, 2019

cody_armstrong · July 2019

This update is a special one for us here at Onshape. While we do not normally discuss "version" numbers publicly, internally each development sprint has a number assigned. This update is a meaningful one because we have now reached the milestone of sprint 100. Onshape "version" 1.100 focuses on usability improvements and a number of new highly-requested features. Let's dive in.

CAD IMPROVEMENTS

"EMAIL AS LINK" EXPORT OPTION

You will find a new "Email as link" export option when exporting in Onshape. This new option allows you to export the model and send a person a download link. The link has an expiration date that you set, and it can also be password protected.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/6lvqp4mep1

PARAMETRIC SKETCH VERTEX SELECTION

You can now select every vertex in a sketch by selecting a sketch from the feature list. This is useful in features like Hole feature that use many sketch points. One other benefit of this improvement is the selection is parametric. So if more points are added to the sketch, the features that are dependent on the sketch will automatically update.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/be8dmuysh6

VERSION AND HISTORY FLYOUT IMPROVEMENTS

You can now restore Documents, create branches, delete branches, and edit properties directly within the Versions and History flyout without opening the Document.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/0qst5tc557

SELECTION PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS

A small change has been made to how measure works in Onshape. Now when selecting a large number of entities (ex. window-selecting) Onshape will no longer automatically measure each entity selected. Instead, you will see a small measure icon in the bottom-right corner where you can view the measurement on demand. This change has led to a considerable decrease in the time it takes for large selections to be useable by a feature.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5022071/uploads/editor/q0/x2oryf3lc26r.png

PROFESSIONAL IMPROVEMENTS

REFRESH RELEASE CANDIDATE

You will see a new Refresh button in the Release candidate dialog. This is useful if you create a release candidate and have an error that prevents you from releasing (a part in a rolled back state for example). In the past, the release candidate had to be deleted and recreated. But now, you can fix the problem and come back to the release candidate and refresh.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/0dmi0mpzfi

ENTERPRISE IMPROVEMENTS

SUPPORT FOR MULTIPLE WORKFLOWS

When creating a release candidate in Onshape Enterprise, you can now pick which workflow you want the Release Candidate to enter. This can be useful if your company has different workflows for different data.

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/pucptdmlis

ADD ITEMS FROM OTHER DOCUMENTS TO RELEASE CANDIDATE

In Onshape Enterprise, you can now add items from other Documents to a release candidate. As an admin or owner of an Enterprise in Onshape, you will see a new release management setting to "Allow adding items from other Documents."

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/vdyysyczfo

A special thank you to the people at Onshape who make each update possible. With each release, there is a tremendous amount of work that must be done by people who are largely never credited. This includes our dev team, QA, UX, ops, and many others at Onshape that make each update feel seamless.

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.

emagdalenaC2i · July 2019

Great improvements!
I think I will start soon using the export as email ;-)

adam_geary · July 2019

I'm very keen on that vertex sketch selection update. That'll be a boon for sure!

emagdalenaC2i · July 2019

En este enlace podéis ver las Novedades de Onshape en español

https://youtu.be/mURf4lKcT2U

EricGauthier · July 2019

Always waiting for a new release!

My favorites:
- Parametric Sketch Vertex Selection
- Selection Performance Improvements
- All Performance Improvements (listed in changelog)

Useless to me:
- "Email as Link" Export Option
--> I would like these options on the Share command,
I never export a part or assembly alone.
I prefer place everything (exported) in a new document and then share this document.
- Refresh Release Candidate
--> Release Management tool is too time consuming for multi-level large assemblies like I work with when everything is due for yesterday.
We tried it and it is easy to start releasing and releasing and releasing... again, and again, and again.

EvanReese · July 2019

I like all of this! The refresh release candidate is much needed. Sketch vertex selection is a cool step and I really hope Onshape keeps increasing parametricity for selection criteria so it can be driven with more logic and fewer clicks. Congrats on Sprint 100.

john_mcclary · July 2019

sketch selects all verticies, sweet, been missing that for a while

Glad you removed auto measure, that should speed things up a bit

Grats on 100 releases!

owen_sparks · July 2019

Good stuff, especially impressed with the parametric vertex selection. That's got legs.

Owen S.

sebastian_glanzner · July 2019

Congratulations on the 100th update!
Great new features and the performance has also been improved!

To the entire Onshape Team: Well done!

john_mcclary · July 2019

Oh sweet! you are starting to add menu icons

emagdalenaC2i · July 2019

What would be the best method to use the vertices of the sketches?

Currently, points cannot be defined as construction geometry
And vertex of construction geometry entities are also included when the sketch is selected.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5022071/uploads/editor/s7/bfmzz2mw79o3.gif

What do you think?

john_mcclary · July 2019

I agree, Currently I think it is too sensitive to be useful

It would give better control if it ignored all vertices of construction geometry

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5022071/uploads/editor/0z/hnsi53si00w7.png

emagdalenaC2i · July 2019

Of course you can select the points of the sketch that you don't want...

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5022071/uploads/editor/b9/59jrqtxan6fn.gif

But I agree It would be better if it ignored all vertices of construction geometry

john_mcclary · July 2019

Oh that's good, we can un-select, unfortunately I create hole patterns and such through a lot of construction geometry rather than points, because parametric...

So it would be more un-selecting than selecting in my case (with the exception of sketch pattern)

Support contacted me and they have created an improvement ticket, l'm going with your suggestion of ignoring construction geometry as a filter

Ryan_Almeida · July 2019

Per usual, great update! Making our lives easier every time!

StephenG · July 2019

Re: PARAMETRIC SKETCH VERTEX SELECTION

Concept is sound, but implementation is complete garbage.

I am at a loss understanding how such a poor implementation could ever be released.

kevin_o_toole_1 · July 2019

@StephenG What specific issue are you having with the parametric vertex selection?

StephenG · August 2019

@kevin_o_toole_1

It appears my negative comment with how "parametric vertex selection" for the Hole feature was implemented has been removed and "converted" into an enhancement request (ticket: #171979). I am OK with that. I will honor OS's decision to move the discussion to a venue better suited to discuss its implementation short comings.

Henk_de_Vlaam · August 2019

'Email as link' is absence with me.
Because it is not mentioned in the announcement I looked in the Help and found that the Free and Education version of Onshape do not have this feature.

MBartlett21 · August 2019

Henk_de_V said:

'Email as link' is absence with me.
Because it is not mentioned in the announcement I looked in the Help and found that the Free and Education version of Onshape do not have this feature.

Here is an IR: https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/12096/export-as-link-from-education-free-versions

brian_brady · August 2019

I hope the division of features between Pro/Enterprise and Free/Standard/Education does not continue. I don't mind that the higher paid versions get some features sooner or with group/company specific options, but I am not a fan of rolling out more and more features for the two highest tiers that would be useful in some way for every level of user.

owen_sparks · August 2019

Hi.

I'd just like to add my voice to the parametric sketch as a feature input debate.

Firstly, this is an awesome direction. The road ahead, if this is the first step along a development path, looks set to have a big impact on the norm for modeling practices. Taking earlier features as inputs for downstream features will be a game changer. It's a bit like how featurescript works. (example, take the thing above and fillet it. Upstream changes just work with no change in stuff to select for the fillet.)

(1) That said I'd be keen to see a quick 2nd step to address the points made by others above. If we "use" any bit of geometry we have an unwanted vertex. If we have the outline profile of a part we have many. Heck, even if we just add a center point rectangle we add a potentially unwanted center hole. That's infuriating, which isn't the normal Onshape UX experience.

(2) You know me, the first thing I try to do with a new feature is configure it. In this instance with multiple sketches that the config picked which one to use. On my config even though I'd selected the whole sketch as the input to the original hole feature this was blown into individual points in the configuration. The good news was I was able to delete those individual points in config table and select the sketch again. This time it stuck and behaved as originally expected. showing "1 selection" as opposed to "6 selections" when clicking on a sketch with a hexagon on it.

So overall good upgrade as is today, huge potential for the future, but with niggles as it stands. Being slightly less generous it looks like the example in the video was chosen as a rather edge case that would work. (no reference geometry, no projected geometry, just a few dimensions to turn the sketch black.)

Cheers, Owen S.

mlaflecheCAD · August 2019

@EricGauthier About the "Refresh Release Candidate" comment from above...

--> Release Management tool is too time consuming for multi-level large assemblies like I work with when everything is due for yesterday.
We tried it and it is easy to start releasing and releasing and releasing... again, and again, and again.

The key to use this correctly is to set the Revision in the assembly before releasing the top assembly. For example. when releasing the Cover, Blade, Motor. Note that the parts have the triangle next to them indicating that the proper maturity state of the parts are set to a release versus a version or workspace.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5022071/uploads/editor/5u/7eslczcy8bwz.png

Then when the top level assembly and the Base, XS are ready to be release, the Release Candidate screen will be shown as below...

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5022071/uploads/editor/n4/1gx7jw660f96.png

I hope this helps and I am happy to reach out personally to go over this together with you!

All the best... Mike LaFleche

michael_bromley · August 2019

@mlaflecheCAD thats great and all, but now you have broken the automatic linking and propagation of updates/revisions to parts at your assembly level. Using this methodology if I want to create a new revision of a part I would then need to find all the places that it had been referenced and update the version. This get's really confusing when the part is a couple levels deep in assemblies. This has been discussed quite a bit in the data management section so I won't get too far into it, but the workflow could use some serious attention.

mlaflecheCAD · August 2019

@michael_bromley Thanks for pointing that out. The whole point is to have proper configuration control and not to make the wrong parts. Setting a revision is a like a design freeze. This prevents updates from just going out and updating everything without your consent.

That being said, there will be things coming in a future what's new update that will address the very valid point that you have above. Stay tuned :-)

brucebartlett · August 2019

Great to see more updates. These are really appreciated and Congratulations on Reaching the big 100.

brucebartlett · August 2019

mlaflecheCAD said:

@michael_bromley Thanks for pointing that out. The whole point is to have proper configuration control and not to make the wrong parts. Setting a revision is a like a design freeze. This prevents updates from just going out and updating everything without your consent.

That being said, there will be things coming in a future what's new update that will address the very valid point that you have above. Stay tuned :-)

I've been attempting to use release management, which I want to use and it has lots of great advantages but also many, many pain points and @EricGauthier is spot on with his assessment. It works really well at a part and single assembly level but once you try to implement at on a multiply level project that still needs future changes everything slows to a halt and increases the work loaded by 30% to 40%, I find I am trying to rush stuff through without the in-context checks just because all the switching of releases back to the main nodes (live) and then back to released versions is just too hard. To be totally honest I hate having to return to a released document to make changes, as it's just too time-consuming to get in and out of a live-work scenario. I've spent many weeks and painful hours trying to get good workflows here, as I have also documented on this forum and will be definitely staying tuned.

sjalife · August 2019

@owen_sparks, I have the same comments (and did have the same issue when using it in a configuration, it is hit and miss, sometimes it selects the whole sketch and sometimes the individual points).

Also, as @emagdalenaC2i stated, you can unselect, BUT then you lose the ability to automatically reference new points added to the sketch.

Add me to the improvement request.

A temporary workaround I found to the use of features and construction lines is to create a sketch with all the necessary mumbo jumbo to make it work, then create ANOTHER sketch and "USE"/project the points I need the holes to be in so that's the one selected in the Hole feature.

While it does leave a sketch there in limbo, and you do have to keep projecting the points you want manually, It is less painful and still helps keep the multiple selection abilities.

philip_thomas · August 2019

Ok, I'll bite - the original argument for including the center of a rectangle to include in a parametric sketch selection (5 vertices) was that 99/100 the user will either want a hole in the middle OR there will be another (larger) hole in the middle that 'erases' the hole. Think of a bolt hole circle for mounting a motor. I agree that superficially it looks like there is an extra hole, but please think this one through and comment if you agree/disagree.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5022071/uploads/editor/bt/b6mq4mc2o1u6.png

michael_bromley · August 2019

@philip_thomas Unfortunately I will have to disagree. We use a 3R pallet mounting system in many of of our fixtures which requires a square bolt pattern. It is easiest to constrain this pattern by first sketching a square and using it's four corners. In the many cases there is no center hole to go along with it. Just one use case here. I really like the concept, but think that it can be refined further.

philip_thomas · August 2019

@michael_bromley - thank you for the feedback! This is exactly how we make the features better