Onshape is really great, and getting better.
January 08, 2018
Onshape is really great, and getting better.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Onshape
We use Onshape to develop products for prototyping and manufacturing. All of our mechanical engineering and industrial design people use Onshape, for at least some work. It's powerful, affordable, cloud-based CAD, which solves a lot of things for us.
- Cloud CAD is awesome for so many reasons.
- You can't crash and lose work.
- You're always up to date with the latest version.
- You can run it on any computer or tablet and don't need an expensive workhorse computer.
- You can easily collaborate with team members, even at long distances.
- You can control all of your files and who has access to them, so if you want to share data with several potential vendors, you can do that and revoke access once you pick one. You can prevent copies of the files from being made.
- Built-in revision history and versioning: no need for Solidworks PDM or some system to check files in and out to work on them. You also never need to make a file copy to experiment with a new direction. You can always get back to any step since the file was made.
- Clean and logical user interface. I've used Solidworks, Rhino, Alias, and Fusion 360. Onshape's UI is by far my favorite.
- Custom features with Featurescript. For certain types of users, this will be a game changer. It lets you automate tasks that once had to be very manual.
- Always getting updated. It's like Christmas.
- It doesn't have the feature set yet for certain things. I use a lot of surfacing, for example, and while Onshape is moving in that direction (and making great progress), Solidworks, Fusion 360, or Rhino currently blow it out of the water (as of this writing, but they are improving fast).
- You know how I said I love the UI. I love it except the lack of icons in certain menus. All of the options are just text, so it can be hard to find them sometimes.
- Obviously, Cloud has the disadvantage of being tied to internet connectivity. If you know you have spotty internet, then you're going to be frustrated by Onshape.
- I don't have a whole lot to add here, but usable CAD files are one of our main outputs and are of some of the greatest value to our clients. Onshape helps us to produce those.
- Fusion 360 and solidworks
I've kind of already touched on this, but here's another take:
Onshape vs. Solidworks - Onshape is much cheaper, more usable, and does certain things much much better. It also removes many pain points I feel with Solidworks (SW). However, SW has decades of development and experience so it's extremely powerful software, that for certain applications, cannot be replaced by Onshape.
Onshape vs. Fusion 360 - both are cheaper than SW and free for hobbyist use. I find Fusion to also be very powerful but feels like a couple of different software suites smashed together (which can be both good or bad). It's also got the cloud element, but it still runs locally on the machine, which does require some horsepower.
Onshape vs. Solidworks - Onshape is much cheaper, more usable, and does certain things much much better. It also removes many pain points I feel with Solidworks (SW). However, SW has decades of development and experience so it's extremely powerful software, that for certain applications, cannot be replaced by Onshape.
Onshape vs. Fusion 360 - both are cheaper than SW and free for hobbyist use. I find Fusion to also be very powerful but feels like a couple of different software suites smashed together (which can be both good or bad). It's also got the cloud element, but it still runs locally on the machine, which does require some horsepower.