Onshape beta, free online version of Solidworks

[gestalt73]

A buddy of mine tipped me off about this. It appears to be an online version of Solidworks. Looking at their pricing page, they are offering a free version as well.

http://www.onshape.com/product-tour
http://www.onshape.com/features-and-pricing

Looking at the videos, it feels very much like Solidworks. I've requested beta access, if I get in, I'll play around with it a bit and let everyone know more about it.

My guess is that they're offering the part and assembly features, but none of the stress analysis etc.

Cool.

Alan

[Jimustanguitar]

One of the MakerHive guys got in already, and the rest of us are signed up. We're doing a mini-series at our meetups where we take on an object and demo how to draw it in each of our preferred design flavors, hopefully he'll be up to speed enough to demo OnShape soon!

The ability to simultaneously edit a design (like google docs) is what really wows me about it! Very promising, I hope it's as cool to use as it looks.

[Mac The Knife]

I'll be slightly disappointed if I can't use my space mouse, and being browser base, it prolly won't.

[heathenx]

If it's truly browser based and works on Linux then BOOM!

[Mac The Knife]

It should, smartphones were included in their presentation.

[Mac The Knife]

It should, smartphones were included in their presentation. But it also means you will need internet access to use it.

[enggmaug]

I used it about 2.26 minutes.

I created very fast a shape, without really controling what I was doing in term of measurments, but the interface looks very intuitive to me.

However, I could not find an export option... Maybe that is only the free version, maybe I was not able to spot it out... but if there is no export, then there is no use.

I'll take some more time later on to see about it, but now, my wife is calling for dinner....





EDIT > After more research, I found how to export to STL. It does work well, now, I just need to use it for few new parts and see how practical it is.

[heathenx]

I designed a couple parts a few minutes ago with it. Part modeling and assemblies seem to work great. I haven't tried any thing advanced yet but it looks like all of the functionality is there. I'd like to try the drawing module but I didn't see the option anywhere. I was using my Windows lappy and not my Linux desktop. Will try the latter soon.

[KAS]

It looks like if you right click in the white space of the screen(sometimes on the part) you get the option to export. I'm only seeing the option for DFX/DWG at the moment.

[enggmaug]

If you right click to the name of the part you actually want to export (in the "parts" area), there is an "export to STL" option.