Dassault recently announced that starting in July new Solidworks desktop licenses will include a cloud service.
Starting in July 2023, all new purchases of SOLIDWORKS Desktop CAD licenses (Perpetual, Term, Standalone, or Network) will include Cloud Services as part of the Subscription.
All existing SOLIDWORKS Desktop CAD Subscription licenses will have the opportunity, for a nominal fee, to upgrade to Subscription with Cloud Services, but they will have the flexibility to continue to renew their usual Subscription, if they prefer.
Does anyone know how this will affect existing and future FIRST Solidworks users? My team has traditionally been a Solidworks team and used GrabCAD for design sharing. However, the pandemic left us with a dearth of CAD experience and with the imminent loss of GrabCAD we switched to Fusion 360 for the year. We now have a handful of members with some experience with CAD but who are generally unhappy with F360.
The two options we are considering are returning to Solidworks, or switching to OnShape. We know a fair number of other teams who like OnShape, but we do view Solidworks as the more capable tool. Really, the only problem with Solidworks is the lack of a sharing system.
We havenāt tried 3DExperience because, frankly, we have found the on-boarding process to be off-putting. Old advice was that it wasnāt worth the effort, and we realize that Dassault has put a lot of effort into making it better, but not being able to directly control organization membership is a big problem.
We would love to try PDM vault, but we do not have a server of our own and we canāt afford to pay for a 7/24 cloud service to run it on. Has anyone gotten it running on a free-tier cloud service?
On the other hand, if we can expect that we will have a cloud service included with Solidworks next year, that would clinch the decision for us, I think, especially if we could start using it in July, so we would have the summer to get used to it. Does anyone know anything about the service? Also, if I am wrong about 3DExperience, either in knowing a way to add and remove members directly, or that it is improved enough to make the difficulty worthwhile, please post it.
Thanks for any info or thoughts on the subject you can provide.
Iām sorry but I audibly snorted when I read this. As youāve possibly discovered, F360 manages to combine the worst aspects of cloud-based and desktop software.
I think youāll find OnShape very capable coming from a SW world, with maybe 1 or 2 notable exclusions (which are easy enough to work around). Itās certainly the most intuitive of the cloud-based CAD solutions, though Iām sure PTC will find a way to mess that up soon enough (plz no).
My recent experiences with 3DX have been āthis is good, but not for meā. As a larger organization thereās a lot of like; at work we used it mostly to deal with people that wanted to nose around CAD, but the whole ecosystem was decent enough in my few days setting things up and trying it out.
I think we can bug @Nick.kremer about changes to the SW sponsorship?
yeah Iād like to know this too, my team generally uses onshape because we need the cloud based structure to work between laptops and work at home, and if solidworks provides that then our team would jump at the chance to swap to solidworks
Iād recommend against PDM for an FRC team. We use it for work and itās great, but it takes a lot of work/ some cost to setup and maintain and is probably too much for most teams. There are some teams that do it though or are at least attempting it.
For 3DX vs OnShape Iād probably recommend OnShape based on the FRC ecosystem alone. Tons of teams use it, there are tons of FRC specific add ins for it, and youāll have no trouble finding FRC support for it. Iām curious myself though to learn more about 3DX.
Itās been interesting seeing signs that industry might be making a mass push towards the cloud based model (for better or worse). Talking to the Autodesk reps at worlds they basically said outright that theyāre pushing fusion 360 over inventor for lots of applications and referred to inventor as more of a āCAD 1.0ā vs fusion 360 being the āCAD 2.0ā I canāt say for sure but with this announcement from Dassault but it seems like the same thing could start happening with SolidWorks users being gently pushed towards 3DX. Itās interesting too how PTC acquired OnShape and the past few years I havenāt heard many mentions about Pro E/Creo (although obviously many still use it.)
This is mostly speculation of course. The big programs like Inventor, SolidWorks, and Creo are here to stay at least in some capacity.
Weāve gone through the process of evaluating the Solidworks cloud process vs. OnShape this spring (post season), and for us (a relatively small team with limited mentors), the whole workflow and file management aspect of the Solidworks thing kills it for us. OnShape is more like Google Docs, and the collaborative activity is WAY easier. Maybe if youāre a large team, with multiple mentors experienced in managing PDM functions, and the time to do that, the 3DX would work.
This really is annoying, as weāve used SW for many years, but as weāve gotten more students trained in CAD (3-4 as opposed to our usual 1-2) the inability to file share via the cloud became a problem. Weād prefer to use SW, as itās a far more mature, stable, and industry standard application and the one most students will encounter out in the work world; but the file sharing and collaborative functionality requires resources we just donāt have. Since OnShape was created by the same folks as created SW, itās similar enough that the transition (for us mentors) isnāt too bad. The whole āmatesā thing is challenging for us āold dogsā; not being able to use āplanesā to mate parts is extremely frustrating.
If possible, would you mind elaborating on this point? My team has a relatively small CAD team and Iām the only CAD mentor, what specific challenges did you run into with PDM that makes it hard to use for a small team like mine?
Not the guy you asked, but using PDM seems like a decent learning curve, and more importantly, a non-zero amount of work to fully implement, upkeep, and train students on. I spent a short while trying to learn it using some of the suggested resources, but quickly stopped when most training videos on youtube were 45 minute-long seminars or, at best, 5-7 minute long videos. I can fully explain how to set up and use grabcad in about a minute. PDM seems to be a fair bit more work for equal if not more complicated functionality.
Of course Iām happy to be proven wrong, but so far Iāve yet to find any resources that show me how to use PDM in a simple, braindead manner. Weāll probably end up using dropbox or google drive, as bad as they are as solutions, just because itās something I can easily get students to use.
Maybe Iām just really naive but what is really so awful about Fusion 360? Our school has been solidworks historically and we switched to Fusion 360 and the students really like it. I came from tinkercad soā¦ Fusion 360 is mind blowing to me. We make good use of the rendering and animation tools. The interface is easy enough to understand and we can produce files for our lab equipment.
My only complaint has ever been the fact that itās cloud based, but since all 3 major choices (solidworks, OnShape and Fusion 360) are all cloud based now itās kind of moot.
Am I just too inexperienced to see why Fusion 360 is a bad choice?
Edit: we do have a combined team where the students can all work together, share files ,etc and they know how to work it. We donāt use comments really but we havenāt had too many issues with students ruining each otherās work or not being able to locate files we need. We have a common file tree they use and specific student folders for their work. Itās really nice from what I experienced trying to get files to export and slice for printing.
The lack of community resources I agree with definitely. It was a little bit of a learning curve for me, but now Iām able to teach the basics from nothing to 3d printing your first useful part to new students in one 8 hour Saturday meeting. When we used to do it with solidworks itād be about 2-3 weeks of bringing new students up to speed. How long is onboarding for OnShape or something else if you know?
Sure. Iām a biochemist, and self-taught on CAD (Solidworks via FIRST), and now the lead CAD mentor for out team. Iāve run classes in the fall for several years now, usually two āsectionsā of introductory CAD with anywhere from 3-6 kids per section; this past year I did one āadvancedā section, getting a little deeper into SW functions. This past year, we had about 4-5 kids who were experienced enough with CAD to be truly useful in designing the robot. They had a heck of a time trying to collaborate, pack-and-go sending each other models with flaws in them (mates that blew up, links that failed). Granted, most of the problems were errors in how they built their models, but theyāre kids, right?
Now that weāre past competition, I dug into the Solidworks cloud collaboration software, which runs through their 3DExperience portal. Iāve used various software in my work life (biopharma process development and manufacturing) that had workflow built in: a manager creates a project, assigns it to a supervisor, they share it with their team, coordinate their teamsā efforts in working on it, and then send it back to the manager when itās finished. The manager then shares it with their peers, and so on and so forth up the chain. The SW PDM requires the same amount of organization and effort; and given that the students have likely never even heard of āworkflowā, trying to get them learn and use it would take even longer than teaching them the basics of CAD. Plus, even though Iām retired, I donāt have the time to monitor each studentās efforts, and meld them together. And taking the time to try and teach even one of the best students to fill that role would be a lost cause; weāre at a high school in which virtually all the students are focused (or maybe just their parents are) on getting into very competitive colleges and universities. Throw in their other extracurricular activities, and thereās no way they can commit the time and effort to running a āCAD departmentā for the team. During midterm week (right in the middle of build season), we basically lose the entire team to their studying for exams.
CAD is just one of the activities on the team I mentor; Iām also one of the two mechanical mentors for design, fabrication, build and wiring. 3DX would be a good tool if you have a large enough team and dedicated mentors to focus on teaching and managing a dedicated CAD team; for us, itās just too complicated and labor intensive for a one man show and a handful of inexperienced kids.
PS. After much discussion with another mentor who lends a hand with CAD from time to time, weāve agreed to switch to OnShape for next year. Thereās a lot I like about OnShape vs. SW, and the ability to collaborate virtually like Google Docs (which the kids already know how to do better than me) was the deciding factor. Thereās stuff I miss (like the ability to mate using planes; the whole totally different approach to mates in OnShape vs. SW is a source of frustration for this āold dogā), but overall, I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.
I signed up for 3DEXPERIENCE to give it a shot and messed with it for a few hours - I donāt think weāll be using it as a team any time soon. Hereās what I learned.
You can view and contact everyone that has signed up for 3DEXPERIENCE in the FIRST community through the platform all 1800+ of them - this includes exposed email addresses for a LOT of people. This alone is a deal breaker IMO. Student privacy is one thing, but weāve also seen a number of phishing scams related to housing etc. Basically anyone can sign up for this, claim their with a FIRST team and get a load of emails to try to scam with fake FIRST emails.
I made a group for our team and ā3D spaceā of which I was the owner / admin, created a part in SW desktop then uploaded it. It went ok, but then I didnāt have permissions to delete the part from the 3D Space, I tried moving it to another space and it just shows up in both of them now. Maybe Iām using it wrong, but I donāt really have faith in the usability of this in the hectic build season if I spent 30 minutes trying to delete a single part.
When you search, other teamsā stuff shows up if they made it public - I know you can filter this out with the who, but by default itās there and kind of annoying.
Thereās no folder organization it relies on 6W tags which is just inferior to folders for an FRC size team and easy for students to screw it up.
I donāt see a clear way to upload a library of parts. If you just drag an assembly in it puts them in your drive and doesnāt make it part in your 3D space. Again probably a way to do this, but I gave this as much time as I think Iām going to.
We donāt have internet in our build space so any solution that requires internet isnāt great for us. I think the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is really meant for working online.
Iād really like to try out Solidworks PDM since itās a proven solution and would be willing to put in the effort to setup a server for the team, but I couldnāt get the license side of it working.
Can someone recommend a good and useful tutorial for OnShape? I regularly use 2D versions of AutoCAD and Microstation, and I occasionally use SW 3D, but I really would like to get more in depth understanding of 3D in OnShape.
I do have full access to SW through my company (and let me just say that SW Electrical is the catās pajamas), but since teams use OnShape, I think it would be good for me to learn more about it. Googling things leaves me with a plethora of sort of ok videos that never really show a good basics, demonstrating the tool bars and so on.
If you have the education license (which is free for FRC, you just have to sign up), most of their learning center is free. Itās a great place to start if youāre learning, or need to learn the difference in your tools from other programs. They have a ton of self guided courses.
Then when you need to get to FRC specifics, I suggest @cadandcookiesvideos on YouTube, and a series from the robo chargers.
And spectrum has done a few design analysis videos in onshape as well.
check out Onshape4frc, itās a great resource for getting started. Gives you details about all the FRC based feature scripts and MKCAD and stuff.
I taught myself how to do cad (because outherwise we wouldnāt have a design mentor) between the 2021 and 2022 seasons and these are the resources I used.
In my view, the only draw back to onshape is thereās no CAM, but apparently they recently bought out a cloud based CAM company so I would assume itās coming soon.