In both Onshape Professional and Onshape Enterprise subscriptions, you have access to release management. This allows users within your company to move objects through an approval process that will automatically increment revision. This Tech Tip will focus on how you can allow an outside party to participate in your process as an Observer at no additional cost. First, third parties need to be added to a team in order to add them as an Observer. Only people within your company can be added to the release process individually. Go to Teams in the company settings and add an outside party email ad ..read more

Texas-based engineer Nicholas Radzykewycz’s love for horses transcends geography, language and culture. A solar software engineer for a renewable energy company by day, Radzykewycz runs a nonprofit design firm in his spare time devoted to improving the lives of animals and lowering the cost of rehabilitation equipment for veterinarians and horse owners in impoverished areas around the world. The company is playfully named “FuzNuz,” a nod to how horses nuzzle their hair (fuzz) into each other to show affection. Also a mechanical engineer, Radzykewycz shares many of his innovations on Thingivers ..read more

Previous Onshape Tech Tips have discussed how to Adjust BOMs in a Drawing, how to Add BOM Items, and how Exclude Parts or Assemblies from a BOM. Today, we are going to discuss how to change the column headers. Frequently, the name you wish to have displayed in a Bill of Materials (BOM) header is different from the property name. This is usually because you need to optimize on space in a drawing, set correct capitalization, or maintain communication with outside programs such as an ERP. The Display Name allows you to modify what is shown in the BOM header so that it displays correctly in your d ..read more

We are excited to share some highly requested features in this release, so let's just jump straight in! CAD IMPROVEMENTS EXPLODE LINES You may now automatically create explode lines for your exploded views.   ADD ROTATION TO MATES You may now specify an angle of rotation directly when defining a mate. This simplifies your workflow, which previously required defining the mate and then editing the mate connector to apply the rotation.   This feature exists in all mates that currently support an "Offset" value, including: Fastened, Revolute, Slider, Planar, and Pin-Slot mate types. SHOW ..read more

Nearly every business leader says they want to improve productivity and increase innovation, but what are they actually doing to make those goals happen? To research the biggest challenges facing engineering teams today, Onshape recently commissioned The State of Product Development and Hardware Design 2020 industry survey, which took the pulse of nearly 1,000 professionals at manufacturing companies across the world. The view from the top always looks different from the view from the trenches. After asking design professionals to assess their companies’ abilities across 15 product development ..read more

Duro PLM is an integrated cloud application now available in the Onshape App Store. When Onshape is paired with Duro PLM, companies can truly leverage the power of the cloud to manage their hardware product data across distributed teams, reducing overhead and accelerating engineering output. The Duro PLM app extends the value of Onshape by providing a simple means to set up a PLM-based Part Numbering System, manage configurations and allow design releases to be centralized in a system accessible to all. With Duro, Onshape users can now implement a PLM system in just a few simple steps, whether ..read more

Onshape users have long known the value of cloud product development tools, but unfortunately there are still times when design tasks force even us cloud-loving engineers to resort to one of those old-fashioned, locally installed, and rarely updated tools that we’d all love to retire. One notable area where this has traditionally been the case is 2D schematic design – for electrical, P&ID, pneumatic, and hydraulic schematics. For that type of design, you’re probably using tools that were first released before many of us were even born. Those tools were certainly not designed to take advant ..read more

In today’s Tech Tip, we will discuss how to use variables in conjunction with sketches and patterns to vary geometry. Variables in Onshape can be used in patterns and their values can be incremented through instances of the pattern. In this example, we’ll use a 8x8 fan cover that has slots varying not only in width, but also in count and spacing as they get further from the center. To create the fan cover, you need to start with the variables. Each variable should be defined twice. The first is the initial value. The second variable defines how it varies with the pattern. All the variables y ..read more

Based on popular demand from our customers, I am delighted to announce the launch of the Certified Onshape Professional exam, an opportunity for engineers to demonstrate their Onshape proficiency and highlight their expertise for industry peers and employers. Onshape has always had a strong commitment to its user training programs – which include live instructor-led training, self-paced courses, technical briefings and video tutorials in the online Learning Center – but there is no better teacher than experience. To officially recognize your experience and expertise, we’re introducing a compre ..read more

Engineers and designers love to create. They want to spend 100 percent of their time engineering and designing, but as with any job, there are obstacles and distractions that lead to downtime and delays. To research what’s getting in the way of engineer productivity, Onshape recently commissioned The State of Product Development and Hardware Design 2020 industry survey, which took the pulse of nearly 1,000 professionals at manufacturing companies across the world. Given that there is no shortage of ways to waste time, we asked executives, project managers and frontline engineers to rate which ..read more