Top 3 Onshape Updates: Projected Curve, Bridging Curve, Merge Surfaces

Late last week Onshape rolled out another major release. If I was to read into this at all, I would say preparations are being made for surfacing. Reason, to work with surfaces efficiently, you need to be able to work with curves and existing surfaces efficiently – this update adds a bit for all of that.

You can see the history and catch the latest updates on the Onshape What’s New page, but we’ve had some interest from readers and discussion around keeping closer track of the Onshape features, breaking down the latest, pointing out our favorites and highlighting the ones we think push ahead product dev for CAD in the cloud.

As usual, we’ll attempt to pick our ‘Top 3 Onshape Updates’ and provide a quick overview of the others. Tell us which one you like the best, which need work, or if we picked the completely wrong features!

The Stats:
Total Updates: 12
Total Updates YTD: 53

Top 3 Onshape Updates (04.13.17)

Projected Curve – Curvacious! Use two sketch profiles to create a curve at the intersection of two sketches.

Bridging Curve – Curvacitastical! Use vertex/point and/or an edge to create a curve between two selections.

Merge Surfaces – Curvacisuperlicious! Use ‘Add’ to merge a surface to an existing surface using the Extrude, Revolve, Sweep or Loft command.

Other updates

Conics – You can now create a conic sketch curve using the new Conic feature in the Sketch toolbar.

View-only User Collaboration – Users with view-only permissions for a shared Document can now use Follow Mode and see the Document edited live.

Delete Face – There is a new option to ‘Leave open’ that will delete the face/faces selected and leave you with an open surface.

Break View – You can now break drawing views, which is useful for long parts that extend beyond the border of the drawing.

Importing Curves – Onshape now supports importing curves. If you are importing CAD data with curves, you should now be able to see the curves in Onshape.

Curve Improvements – View curves as a separate item in the Parts List, and make them easier to hide/show/rename/delete.

Flip Dimension Text – Left-click a new elbow point in the leader to flip the dimension text to the other side of the arrow.

User Property Type – New option for property type called ‘User’ that allows you to search by name when entering a property value.

Offset Surface – Offset surface is moved out of the ‘Move Face’ command for faster/clearer access.

You can see videos that breakdown each new features here. We’ll be keeping an closer eye on what Onshape is releasing with each update, so let us know what features you’re watching for or want to see the most!

Ask questions and talk about Onshape on SmackTalk!  Our new community site!