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Comment by brookst | Hacker News Reader

OnShape is amazing. Solidworks paradigm, not surprising because the founders are ex-solidworks. Just beautifully done web app, works great on iPad and everything.

And a really nice community-driven plugin capability. From hex infill for 3D printing to mesh deformation, there’s probably a plug-in. And the assemblies and modeling are very nice.

For top-down parametric design I don’t think you can do better.

I’ve got no connection to onshape other than having used it for years, for probably hundreds of models. Love it.

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I passed this over just yesterday and went with a fusion 360 demo but you’ve convinced me to give it a shot.

I’ve been having issues with my cheap-ish peristaltic pumps and realized I’d either need to spend way too much or build/3d print something myself in order to resolve the issues.

The cloud aspect of fusion seriously kills my enthusiasm for it.

Note that OnShape is pure cloud (web app) if I understand it correctly -- so perhaps it provides the best parts of a web native app too.

The Fusion 360 move to cloud appear to be purely aimed at justifying forcing a subscription model for Fusion stuff. Though the monthly price for hobbyist isn't half bad.

Don’t believe the hype, onshape is like a Cad software on Citrix. It’s not spreading the cost of computing a complex fillet over hundreds of machines (or even better, running the same operation in the browser and the cloud and letting the fastest one win). They spin one EC2 for you. So you really don’t get any benefit from the cloud.

I don’t need a beefy windows machine in addition to my MBP for my CAD work so there’s the cross platform/consistent performance benefit.

A lot of people have pretty good success running solidworks in wind on a mac.

the cloud benefit is in the version control, branching, merging, multiplayer, never having to send files, always working in the same version as everyone else. It's in everything communication, not in quickly calculating a fillet.

I also got very sad when I learned it was bought by PTC.

I'd also recommend giving Shapr3D a try. Its an extremely nice up-and-coming CAD suite. Very little cloud integration as well (they only very recently added model syncing to your account). Their lineage is definitely as an iPad app, but its been ported with perfect fidelity to MacOS and Windows, and I think that touch-first small-screen lineage has forced them to produce a tool that's so quick and productive to just pick up and get to modeling. Its also built on Siemens Parasolid, same as SolidWorks and OnShape.

[1] https://www.shapr3d.com/

Bizarre, does this mean Shapr has parametrics now? I tried it last year and it didn’t offer that, so I’ve ignored it since. I loved the UI and actually liked the iPad experience too. Maybe it’s time to give it another chance! Thanks for the tip.

I have to say, my biggest hesitation about these kinds of software is knowing anything I create is inevitably trapped behind a subscription. $50/month to maintain access to my designs is really steep! I suppose I can output static models, but to use parametric features, I’ll always need to be subscribed.

I did the Model Mania 2001 part 1 challenge in a little under 18 minutes. The part 2 challenge involved only changing the 45 deg to 55 and the height of the center of the bore, so less than a minute.

I know Fusion 360 but it's amazing how fast Onshape can be.

OnShape is pretty nice, but their language, FeatureScript, is a disaster.

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