As many of you have heard, Onshape went live today with the release of Onshape Beta. I'm very excited because I'm now able to talk about my experiences with the software and where I hope it is heading.
Onshape is a new CAD environment developed specifically for the cloud. With that comes a new way of thinking about how users develop designs and collaborate. Access Onshape through a browser on any device. Being browser-based, Onshape requires no software to be downloaded, no files to manage.
Accessing Onshape requires an Internet connection at all times and may have access issues due to security settings at some sites. I have used Onshape extensively at a variety of locations including my wired and wireless home office connections, multiple public Wi-Fi connections (too many coffee shops to count), and customer sites.Â
There was only one time that I couldn’t use Onshape  while still being able to connect to a Wi-Fi; unfortunately this was a customer site and I was never able to demonstrate Onshape live to them. It was determined that this was because of some security settings on the part of my client, but it was never resolved.Â
I can report that even at crowded Starbucks locations with unreliable and slow connections that I have found the performance acceptable and have rarely lost any work (never more than the sketch I was creating/editing) and that was rare. Bottom line: you need Internet access to get into Onshape; I guess this will not be an issue more than 99% of the time.
Onshape at this point has limited Solid Modeling capabilities compared to most mid-range CAD tools. They are developing everything from the ground-up so. New features and enhancements are introduced regularly (fortnightly updates) and I feel positive about how long it will take the development team to have much of what most users will need.Â
New solid geometry is developed in what Onshape calls a Part Studio. Any Part Studio is a multi-part geometry development environment. There are no external references to worry about. All the craziness associated with file-based dependencies are gone. This is the way it should be (and the way it was, if I remember how it worked in I-DEAS 6 back in the day…). Assemblies can be created to represent the product structure and mechanisms accurately. It takes a little getting used to, and there are some implications to how the Part Studios and Assemblies currently work, but there is enormous potential for Onshape to help users develop some breakthrough products because of the structure they have.