OnShape - new CAD from SW founders?

[Lew_Merrick]

Some folks at work (not me!) work on nuclear threat issues so I'd think security would be a serious consideration for them. IAC, I doubt anybody is after my work files, or the personal files, that are located on DropBox.

Unlike your house where, unless you have something fantastic to entice a professional thief, data on servers, cloud or otherwise is the domain of any syscruncher -- witness the various e-mail crunches of recent years. Whereas I will grant you that nearly all of them included the fact that the "system administrator" never bothered to delete the original "access account," but data mining is an ongoing and broadly-based activity being engaged in by both the "bad guys" as well as the supposed "good guys" -- to equally nefarious ends.

 

[MikeHenry]

And of course having local copy of the files isn't much help if the software to open the files is actually 'away in the cloud'.

Exactly. Net Flix was down for a while the other day and the same thing happening to OnShape could mean loss of productivity.

Kind of like GMD's licensing scheme going AWOL once in a while for various folks here. That happened to me a couple weeks back on one of my installs and I wasn't too happy about it. TS fixed me up pretty quickly, though.

 

[spiked]

For the moment it looks like MBAs (didn't forget any of this years buzzwords) looking to fish for a mailing list.
Don

What's it looking like to you now? I see several funerals for other vendors.

I will say I was surprised to see 3DS listed as a strategic partner. But would explain another trend I had seen as well.

 

[spiked]

Mike,

A friend of mind who is a professional syscruncher for an "unnamed government agency" can break into DropBox in about 40 or so minutes.

Pretty much true for anything, If you got something somebody actually wants.

 

[MikeHenry]

It looks like OnShape is in open beta now and anyone can sign up.

You pay by the month or year ($100/month?) for the professional license and the non-pro is free. The free version limits you to 5 "documents", which appear to be essentially projects that can be comprised of multiple parts, drawings, assemblies, etc, and also limits you to 5 GB total data. You can have more than 5 documents in the free version, and can change the 5 to which you have access on the fly. I'm not sure if they plan to have CAM, motion, or FEA capability. I have played with it just a little and the constraint system has some interesting features, compared to GM.

It will be interesting to see what GM has in store for us in a month or so.

Mike

 

[spiked]

Since this is a competitors board I will not go into detail.

But those who believed it was "For the moment it looks like MBAs (didn't forget any of this years buzzwords) looking to fish for a mailing list." it turns out they are very wrong, very.

And again, to me one of the most important reveals was that 3DS is a PARTNER. Sure 3DS can be a partner with their printers, and continue to put effort into their own, not trying to criticize it but lets be real here, inferior competitive product, or they can drop CAD. Im not going to argue about what might happen, only stating an obvious business dilemma, that 3DS has been aware of for some time as a partner.

I was in the pre-production (which was pre-beta) for a while. I can say I stopped using GM within a day of starting Onshape.

http://www.spiked3.com to see how I really feel

 

[dwc]

I have placed an invite, but am now not so sure.
If I am reading their blogs correctly there is no drawing module.
We have been through this before.
CAD without production drawings is useless.
Don

 

[spiked]

I have placed an invite, but am now not so sure.
If I am reading their blogs correctly there is no drawing module.
We have been through this before.
CAD without production drawings is useless.
Don

It is beta, expecting everything to be there would be foolish. Download the dwg or dxf file which it supports fine, open in a drawing editor (eg GM) and draw away, if you are really interested in using beta software for production (not wise BTW).

I think most of us look at a beta to see what is coming and to help improve the product. 2 seconds of effort and you would have known how high a priority is for drawing. Yet you declare Onshape useless because its not there. Interesting.

http://www.onshape.com/product-tour

 

[dwc]

While I am waiting for an invite to try it out I only have the possibility to compare by paper.
I am intrigued, but that is how it looks for now.
Don

 

[kev h]

Hi

Just got my invite and had a quick play , nice slick look (smooth lines !! ) , would take some getting used too but unusable to me as way to stuttery rotating , zooming and dragging and have reasonable Pc and 18mb internet.

Cheers Kev

 

[Dave Sohlstrom]

I signed up and got my invite Email on 3/9/15 at 10:45 AM. I got my account Email on 3/11/15 at 14:11. Went online and tried it out. It is not as quick as GMD running on my computer. When my GMD maintenance runs out I can save $300.00 per year.
Reports are that they are working on drawings and should be on the release.

I think it will work just fine once one gets use to running it.

Dave

 

[spiked]

I am running a fairly recent computer (and what I would call an old video card). My experiences has been it is as fast if not faster than GM.

Your internet connection will affect initial load time, while the model is being transferred to you. After that it is all webGL performance in your browser.
If you have a video card that is not good at this, it will be noticeable. I would imagine they are not trying to hard accommodate legacy hardware, rather leave that up to the browser, but most people looking at cloud solutions would have something relatively up to date. GM uses directx9, quite old now. webGL is probably looking for something newer. Your video card can easily be a great dx9 card and a not so good webGL card. You can evaluate your hardware using http://www.fishgl.com/ My computer maintains the max, 59 FPS up to the max fish count, 400.

I will say they also do not, at the moment at least, support older file formats. I have a vendor I have been using that only accepts 2004 dxf files. He could not open current dxf format, and so I am looking to find a new vendor.

As far as drawings, it is not a rumor. It is clearly mentioned on the product description page I linked to earlier.

https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/d4 ... pover=true

 

[kev h]

Hi Mike

Just tried the fish thing Work Pc with GTS250 worked fine upto 375 (60fps) then dipped slightly at 400 . (Older home pc with newer GTS450 struggled after 100 fish )

When trying Onshape on work Pc yesterday was horrible to use and just dragging a rectangle out 10mm would jump 3-4 times to get there.... maybe its just a beta prob....

Cheers Kev

 

[spiked]

Yeah that is surprising. Normally the numbers are generation, level - so a 250 would be gen 2, middle, a 450 would be gen 4, middle - almost always newer gens are faster.
Current gen is 9, so both are quite old. My card is a 690 - so it too is old, but a high end card in its day. I really dont think its a beta problem, as I said, once webGL gets it, not much Onshape has to do with it. But like you said, could be.
*unless both machines are not running webGL and falling back on software, that would explain a lot.

 

[dammerel]

Having software running on the cloud does worry me
I would download all my files as step (cad neutral) as a safety backup
I'm interested if on shape can produce DWG drawings

Andrew

 

[spiked]

Having software running on the cloud does worry me
I would download all my files as step (cad neutral) as a safety backup
I'm interested if on shape can produce DWG drawings

Andrew

I have to laugh - nothing personal. I just go back a long way in computers. We had the central mainframe, with central management of hardware including disks and their backups. The along came the new better PC, and the mainframes got pushed out of existence (mostly). And slowly, step by step, the concept of central has become the smarter choice again, and everything is moving into the cloud. One by one I have seen the new better technology adopt practices and functionality of the old dinosaurs. I'm guessing 20 years from now, we will see new-fangled personal computers, they will be all the rage

I think for you to make your own backups, vs the cloud making theirs, would not add much protection, if any from hardware failure. However, vendor lock-in is a different story, and for that I would expect a service to become available that would make vendor neutral local copies for you. But then again, everyone already has this huge and potentially fatal problem in something probably even more critical, mail. More important because that is probably where your design specs came from; you can recreate a design from the specs, you cannot re-create all your mail from a CAD design. If anyone has ever experienced a local mail file failure (.PST) they probably are not too worried about it, as it is magnitudes more miserable than anything else that could happen.

I trust these guys, they really seem to know what they are doing. Sure everyone makes mistakes, but I bet they make less of them than I do.

OS supports DWG now, and as mentioned many times before will be adding production drawing editing soon.

 

[Jim C]

One thing that must be kept in mind is that you are paying for a service and not purchasing a license for a program. There are programs that require paying for a yearly license but you never get to “keep” the program as you do with Geomagic Design and other such programs. And the assumption is that reasonable internet service is always available, not where I live.
As far as security and safety of your data goes it is probably as safe as most backup systems. Again I’ll mention that my main concern is disruption of service. Not that it would cause me any real problems as long as I can get a cup of coffee and wait for things to settle down. The possibility of a large CME is real but not very likely, but if it occurs it will be chaos for a while. Pencil and paper will still work!

Jim C

 

[spiked]

Interesting perspective.

WIth Alibre, and others, are you not paying for a license? Yes, it it does not go away in a year, but do you not have to pay for "maintenance" each year if you want bug fixes? I think characterizing that as 'get to keep' is somewhat misleading. Without an internet connection, Alibre will fail license verification and refuse to run. Time will tell how long their license servers will continue, but I think the default is no servers, no run, is it not? If that is the case, which I believe it is, programs like Alibre are at best the same.

I totally understand the worry about lack of internet. The place I previously lived, East Tennessee (very conservative), did not believe in a lot of things of the modern world, including internet. And the population reflected that. Internet access is either important to you or it is not. I do not see how any modern software for any purpose can accommodate places that do not have internet. Here the US is dragging behind, but at least we just upped the definition of broadband, irregardless of for profit company's loud objections. But conservatives, who by nature are conservative (who would have thought?) are slowly winding back time as they get more and more control. Lack of internet is a consequence of how you choose to live, and yes, pencil and paper still work, it is just not very competitive if used long term. But short term, I bet it is still the source of most new important ideas

 

[Jim C]

Mike, I did not mean to imply that the license is free but if I decide not to continue maintenance I still have a working program without the need of internet access and monthly or yearly fees. Of course I will not get any added features but the program and all my existing files will be available. I still have some very old programs that are no longer available but I can still design and edit files whenever the need arises (if I remember how to use the program).

I find it interesting that the general perception is that high speed internet access is a given. And as you pointed out, that is not the case even with satellite or other wireless services unless you want to pay very high monthly fees. But if you have it, enjoy!

Jim C

 

[bigseb]

Mike, I disagree that GD is the same as OS because of its (online) licensing system for two reasons.

1) OS is entirely run online. If there servers crash or are down for maintenance then you won't get anything either and you have no control over when this happens. With GD its in your hands.

2) GD offers the options of a dongle. This means it will run perpetually without any of the hassles that plague some current users.

Furthermore its worth pointing out that SW looked into the online thing a few years back. They canned the idea due to the instability of the system. Their problem was that when 10 000 users are online trying to perform whatever function it required enormous computational power, far beyond what proved viable. Local is stll best for performance.

I also want to address the connectivity side of things. Internet is not available everywhere. Here in Africa internet is unreliable and very expensive. Electricity isn't guaranteed either but my PC can run off a generator. Internet would still be off in this case though.

Lastly, even if GD folds I still have my install (and all the .exe's from 2010). I can and will always be able to open my files and do work.