Enterprise subscribers can do stress analysis on assemblies.
PTC has announced that Onshape will now have cloud-native simulation. Onshape users on the highest subscription level (Enterprise) will now be able to run finite element analysis (FEA) on the cloud. Users can access FEA from within the Onshape interface. There is nothing to download.
“This is the first time that CAD, PDM, and simulation have all been unified in one cloud-native environment,” said Greg Brown, vice president of Onshape Product Management. “This is an extremely efficient way for designers to simulate full assemblies, helping them make important time, material, and quality decisions earlier in the design process.”
The FEA available is limited to linear statics, so users can only analyze for deflection and stresses. Although assemblies can be analyzed, there is no dynamic or kinematic simulation for them.
Onshape uses the FEA solver from Frustrum, the generative design company that PTC acquired in 2018.
Onshape users who needed simulation previously had to use a “partner” application such as Altair SimSolid, SimScale and OnScale.
Once available to more subscription levels, simulation will help Onshape catch up to its main competition, Fusion 360, Autodesk’s all-encompassing design and manufacturing platform. Fusion 360 has included simulation for years and currently offers a breadth of simulation types: linear statics, thermal, modal frequencies, buckling and more. Fusion users can also make use of generative design, which has not yet made it into Onshape.
Last month, Onshape announced a connection to Arena, the cloud-based PLM application. The addition of simulation is further expanding PTC’s notion of a cloud-based design and manufacturing platform—the promise of Atlas—which PTC has declared to be its software as a service (SaaS) platform of the future.
Simulation with Onshape can be done on assemblies without having to defeature parts. Defeaturing is the act of reducing details, such as small holes or fillets and chamfers, which can be a laborious manual process on complicated parts or an assembly. Onshape simulation will pick up mates created during modeling so that parts in assemblies will have the proper degrees of freedom added or removed.
Simulation results are linked to the design geometry, so when changes are made to the model, the simulation results are automatically recalculated.
The built-in PDM of Onshape will store simulation results for separate design variations.
Having simulation occur in the cloud should be faster than with all but the most powerful local workstations. We expect that most Enterprise users will already have workstations in their workplaces but may still enjoy the convenience of cloud-based simulation in other locations and on other computers or devices. The true democratization of simulation will occur when simulation is made available at lower subscription levels—those users who are more likely to have laptops, PCs or even tablets as their primary computers.
Simulation is currently available for Onshape Enterprise (price not published) subscribers, but PTC plans t to make it available to Onshape Professional subscribers (at $2,500 per year) “soon.” Subscribers to Onshape Standard will presumably have to upgrade their subscription level to use simulation. Hobbyists and makers, who have been able to use Onshape for free, will presumably not be able to have simulation without upgrading their free subscriptions to paid subscriptions.
