The Design Process: Three Must-Watch Onshape Live ’23 Sessions

Now in its third year, the Onshape Live virtual user conference continues to provide technical training, customer success stories, lively keynotes, and the very popular “Sneak Peek” to Onshape users all over the world. 

This year’s event was held on March 1 and 2, but you can still catch everything on demand. More about that below.

In past events, I attended sessions based on my needs at the time. I chose tips and tricks and advanced modeling sessions to help increase my knowledge and skills using Onshape. 

Those sessions helped get me to a place where I feel productive (if you count designing tiny houses or holiday ornaments productive), so this year I decided to seek out a session track where I could learn something new. 

I chose the Design Process track to learn from customers how they evaluated, chose, and implemented Onshape into their organizations. If you are considering a move or are early in the transition process, these are good sessions for you to watch.

"Onshape in the Enterprise, From Evaluation to Success"

In the first session, titled “Onshape in the Enterprise, From Evaluation to Success,” we got to hear from several customers about the processes they went through evaluating Onshape for their organizations. 

I found it interesting that most had started using Onshape “on the side” and were then able to recommend bringing it into the organization. Another common theme was how Onshape slowly made its way to other departments through word of mouth. All reported an overall positive experience throughout the evaluations. We got to hear about how each company set up certain criteria for the evaluation – things like learning curve, data management, handling legacy data, along with support and uptime. Onshape clearly met the objectives of each company.

"Reimagining Your Processes with Agile Product Development"

Next up was host Maureen Carroll with “Reimagining Your Processes with Agile Product Development – A Fireside Chat.” 

The panelists took turns relating how Onshape has allowed their companies to bring multiple stakeholders into the design process earlier, how different departments are able to access the most recent product documentation, and how Onshape’s built-in PDM saved time and money by reducing errors and streamlining approval processes. 

Simulation also plays a big role for these companies – using Onshape Simulation early in the design process guarantees that major issues can be identified and rectified before it gets too late in the production cycle.

"Data Migration is Not as Painful as You Might Think"

The final session in the Design Process track was titled “Data Migration is Not as Painful as You Might Think,” and it turns out to be true! 

Onshape’s Jenny Johnson spoke with Trek’s Nicole Philips about what their company faced when switching to Onshape, specifically, “What do we do with our existing data?” 

It’s a great conversation that covers a lot of ground. Nicole talks about the 1,000s of “standard parts'' that had to be migrated and how decisions were made regarding other data like parts and assemblies. You will be happy to hear that metadata can also be preserved in most situations.

Watch Onshape Live ’23

If you are a regular at user conferences, you know that many sessions run concurrently, and it’s sometimes hard to choose which to attend. Virtual conferences like Onshape Live share that fact, but everything is recorded and made available on-demand as soon as possible so you can catch up on sessions you missed. 

If you registered for Onshape Live ’23, simply log into your account and choose your sessions. If you didn’t get a chance to attend at all, it’s not too late to create an account and catch up on all the great keynotes, technical sessions, and of course, the annual “Sneak Peek.”