Item: Onshape
Rating: 9
Author: Aubrey Cousin

Overall Satisfaction with Onshape

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Onshape to engineer/reverse engineer and build concept parts in the marine industry. We build parts for boat companies.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Importing files. Whether it's STEP, IGES, etc... Onshape does it very well versus some other software I've used.
Constraints in sketches and assemblies are great. Adjustments can be made very easily with an early sketch in your model tree. Changing everything that falls under that particular sketch just by changing the sketch can make things so much easier and faster.
Sheet metal is great which is something we do a lot here. The sheet metal tools have grown since I've started using Onshape and none have been disappointing. The only thing I can think of that is missing is being able to sketch bend a flat model.
Cloud CAD! Being able to work, collaborate, and show projects on the go is by far my favorite feature.

Cons

Sketch being in sheet metal models.
Showing countersinks and counterbores in sheet metal flats.
3D sketching... this can be done by creating planes in areas where you can use constraints points to connect multiple sketches. If there were a 3D sketch mode, however, things would be a lot quicker and easier to make 3D sketches for things like loft extrudes.

Return on Investment

Speed and efficiency in customer relations. Being able to provide the customer with a live model has streamlined our design process.
Collaboration inside the business structure with metal and plastic engineering departments. We've started making more material mixed parts, and collaborating with each other has made things a lot faster in the design process.
Onshape is very affordable when compared against other CAD software. We are very happy with what we spend on Onshape versus what we were spending on past software.

Onshape is quickly becoming the CAD software I recommend over any other. SOLIDWORKS and Inventor are feature rich and leaders in the industry, however, Onshape is beginning to match them with constant updates and is already as feature rich as the two mentioned.

Other Software Used

SOLIDWORKS, Autodesk Inventor, Geomagic

Likelihood to Recommend

Configurations of a certain part assembly are very well thought out and integrated into Onshape. I haven't had much of a chance to use it, but this is only because in the two years I've used Onshape configurations, some features are fairly new and I just haven't had a chance to integrate this into our multiple builds of different part assemblies.

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