Onshape by PTC

What do you like best about the product?

Onshape is stable - no crashing or freezing as is common with offline alternatives. The intuitive simultaneous editing allows teams to work on and prioritize work without a check-in/out procedure preventing access. Everyone has access to the most up to date state of the design.

Built-in versioning and revision control has been excellent as a small team, though we are excited to integrate with Arena for a true PLM experience.

We have had amazing support including monthly meetings with two representatives from Onshape who address our questions and concerns with respect and understanding. On the rare occasion that bugs cause issues in a document filing a support ticket gets helpful responses in less than 24 hours. All support has been knowledgeable and swift.

What do you dislike about the product?

Onshape can be slow to load at busy times of day. A limited number of servers may contribute to this.

Working with imported PCBA files can be challenging. Although there are tools to simplify these, like Fix PCB, it is common to have import issues that are hard to fix and leave the tree red. My team has not yet tried the PCB Studio which might help alleviate some of this issue. More/better integration with Altium would be awesome.

I dislike the release process and its tendency to clutter up the version tree with failures. Rejected releases should not be recorded as anything more than a version. We have also learned the hard way that we have to create a version to save changes in main before doing a release, as changes in main are not guaranteed to transfer. This is counterintuitive.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

As a small team we struggled with version control and file ownership, as well as how to collaborate on the same files. Onshape's native version control is largely intuitive and makes it easy to have "save points" and the branch method is great for exploring design options. Cloud-based files make collaboration easy whether we're in the office or working remotely.

What do you like best about the product?

Onshape is cloud-based, so it doesn’t rely on your computer’s processing power or storage capacity. That makes it easy to access and work on your designs without worrying about losing them if your computer fails, and it also means you don’t have to invest heavily in a high-end laptop just to use it effectively.

Because everything is online, you don’t have to carry a laptop everywhere. As long as you have your login details, you can sign in and access your designs from anywhere.

Since your designs aren’t tied to a specific computer, collaboration is straightforward. You can share a link, and others can open the design and make changes without needing to transfer files back and forth.

It’s also helpful that you can track design updates and return to earlier versions, which is especially useful during the prototype or concept stage. Releases can be traced clearly as well, and having all stakeholders sign off improves visibility and teamwork. It also helps catch minor or major required updates early and avoid costly mistakes before final sign-off.

The learning curve isn’t very steep, so onboarding takes less time. Overall, it saves a lot of time that would otherwise be spent learning, and that time can go toward other work.

What do you dislike about the product?

Disliking is a strong term; I just think there’s always room for improvement.

When you assign a material to a design—let’s say wood—the model should better adopt that material’s texture and color. That would go a long way toward enhancing visualization in the early stages of the design process.

I also think the simulation side could be improved (CFD, static simulation, etc.)

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

These are just a few points, and not limited to the following.

First is the collaboration aspect, where everyone can access the design wherever they are and make changes as needed.

Another benefit is design sharing without the risk of copying or downloading. By simply sharing a link with clients, they can view the design even on low-cost gadgets like tablets and phones.

It also removes the need to invest in an extremely expensive computer, and it negates the need to carry your computer everywhere.

What do you like best about the product?

I like that Onshape is collaborative. It's collaboratively easy to work with.

What do you dislike about the product?

I think sometimes the sketching features are not as intuitive for me. Also, the cam is difficult to learn, even though we use the professional version.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use Onshape mostly for small parts in CAD, and I like that it's collaboratively easy to work with.

What do you like best about the product?

I like that it lets me input code and then generate a drawing based on that code.

What do you dislike about the product?

The main issue is how difficult it is to branch drawings.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

I like that it lets me incorporate drawings into other drawing programs, such as Microsoft Visio.

What do you like best about the product?

Overall software reliability and ease of use have been big step-ups from the previous software I used. Good version control and auto-saving ensures I never lose work. Support is great, pretty responsive, and the team is always making new features that are actually relevant.

What do you dislike about the product?

Importing CAD can result in a bit of a messy document structure. An integration with something like McMaster-Carr or other suppliers' CAD libraries would be helpful to keep thing streamlined. Some of the search functions within menus also do not perform quite as well as I think they could.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

OnShape lets several users at my company rapidly work on the same design without introducing conflicts. It's greatly improved how well we can keep track of project progress. It also has great built-in BOM functionality that is good enough for a company our size to not need to pay for a separate tool for part tracking. Well worth the price of the subscriptions.