As we progress through 2024, PTC’s Onshape continues to demonstrate its commitment to innovation by rolling out fresh updates to its cloud-native CAD and PDM system.
Over the course of the five back-to-back releases, Onshape has introduced a suite of new features and enhancements designed to improve productivity, streamline workflows, and expand design capabilities.
To recap, Onshape Senior Director of Technical Services Cody Armstrong and Onshape Head of Product Greg Brown demonstrate key developments from the following releases:
Agile Product Design Enhancements
Onshape has long been a pioneer in facilitating agile product design workflows, and this update further cements that position with several improvements:
Merge Lines
The introduction of merge lines in the version graph provides clear visual indicators for merge operations, enhancing traceability in design evolution. This improvement allows teams to better understand how different design branches have been combined over time, facilitating more informed decision-making and collaboration.
Protected Branches
Protected branches, a new functionality allowing the creation of workspace protections modifiable through merges, aligns Onshape more closely with software development best practices. This feature enables more structured workflows and safeguards critical design stages from accidental modifications, ensuring the integrity of key design milestones.
Action Item Panel
The newly implemented action item panel, accessible from any point in the interface, significantly improves team communication and task management. By keeping important tasks and discussions readily available, this feature helps maintain project momentum and ensures that critical action items don't fall through the cracks.
Cody demonstrates merge lines, protected workspaces, and the action item panel.
Core Modeling and Drawing Advancements
Onshape continues to refine its fundamental modeling and drawing tools, addressing user needs with several notable enhancements:
Skip Instances in Patterns
The ability to selectively exclude specific instances in linear, circular, and curve-driven patterns offers greater flexibility in complex design scenarios. This feature allows for more nuanced control over repeated elements, enabling designers to create more sophisticated and precise models.
Mate Connectors on Curves
Mate connectors can now be placed directly on curves and aligned to faces, expanding possibilities for patterns and assemblies. This enhancement enables more precise control over component relationships in complex designs, particularly beneficial for intricate mechanical assemblies.
Thin Loft and Thin Sweep
The introduction of thin loft and thin sweep options streamlines the creation of uniform wall thickness features, particularly beneficial for injection molded or cast parts. By reducing the number of steps required to achieve desired results, these tools significantly improve efficiency in certain design workflows.
Mate Connector on Part Origin
The ability to create mate connectors at part origins simplifies assembly operations for complex geometries where traditional mating points may not be easily accessible. This feature proves especially valuable when working with imported geometry or complex organic shapes.
Cross-Highlighting Inspection Items in Drawings
Enhanced interactivity between inspection tables and drawing views improves the efficiency of the inspection process. This cross-highlighting feature allows users to quickly identify the relationship between tabulated data and drawing entities, streamlining quality control procedures.
Custom Watermarks in Drawings
The addition of custom watermarks in drawings ensures brand consistency in documentation and helps protect intellectual property, addressing a common need in professional design environments.
Surfacing Capabilities Expansion
Onshape's surfacing toolkit has been further augmented with powerful additions that enhance its capabilities in high-end surface modeling:
Curve Appearances
Users can now assign colors to curves, enabling better visual differentiation and organization of complex models. This seemingly simple addition can significantly improve model comprehension and reduce errors in intricate designs.
Greg discusses curve appearances.
G3 Bridging Curves
The introduction of G3 continuity options for bridging curves allows for even smoother transitions between surfaces. This feature can positively impact high-quality surface modeling in industries like automotive and consumer product design.
Isoparametric Curves
The new isoparametric curves feature allows for the extraction of high-quality curves directly from surfaces, facilitating cleaner trims and more precise surface manipulations. This enhancement further solidifies Onshape's position as a capable tool for advanced surface modeling.
Greg discusses how to use G3 Bridging Curves and Isoparametric Curves.
Render Studio Enhancements
Onshape's integrated rendering solution, Render Studio, has undergone significant improvements that bring it more in line with the core CAD experience:
‘Beta’ Label Removal
The removal of the beta label and full integration of Render Studio into Onshape, complete with version control and branching support, provides a more seamless experience for users. This integration allows for better coordination between design and visualization processes, streamlining the overall product development workflow.
User Interface Refresh
A redesigned user interface aligns Render Studio more closely with Onshape's main UI, improving usability and consistency. This refresh reduces the learning curve for users transitioning between design and rendering tasks, making the entire process more intuitive.
Workflow Enhancements
New features such as per-instance tessellation control, improved decal projections, and the ability to insert components from linked documents serve to streamline the rendering process. These enhancements give users more control over final image quality and composition, enabling the creation of more impressive and accurate visualizations.
Greg runs through recent enhancements to Onshape’s Render Studio.
Until Next Time…
These improvements collectively demonstrate Onshape's commitment to continuous innovation in cloud-native CAD and PDM. By addressing user needs and industry trends, Onshape ensures that its platform remains at the forefront of digital product development tools.
As Onshape continues to evolve, users are encouraged to explore these new features and provide feedback, as user input remains crucial in shaping the future of this dynamic platform.
But for now, meet us in the Onshape Forums.
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