- Core Design Team – Empowering individual users (designers and engineers) to work more productively together. These core users require the technology to collaborate on the same design in real time, share ideas and improve product innovation.
- Extended Internal Team – Connecting the core design team with mission-critical internal company stakeholders. From supply to operations, manufacturing and marketing, improved cloud-based collaboration enables these team members to provide crucial input and approvals.
- External Partners – Improving information flow with external supply and manufacturing partners to optimize innovation and accelerate time-to-market.
Collaboration Features in Onshape
Branching and Merging
Branching and Merging lets teams explore alternative designs with experimental “branches” off a core design. Users can quickly return to an earlier stage of a project if needed and merge the best elements from multiple designs together.
Follow Mode
With Follow Mode, users can now easily follow along with the design presenter in real time for live design reviews and training sessions. The feature lets teammates add suggestions with live commenting tools, improving efficiency and collaboration.
Edit History
Edit History captures all changes made to the design document. It lets users view all edits made to review, change and undo edits if needed. With an audit trail that is never erased, the Edit History lets users try new ideas with the confidence that they can return to an earlier design point if needed.
Live Comments/ Assigning Tasks
Live Comments lets users share comments instantly in a design document with individuals or an entire team, accelerating collaboration. Closely related, the Assigning Tasks function lets users assign tasks to individuals or entire teams of individuals. Conveniently located in a user’s Comments section, the feature makes it easy to track and complete vital project tasks.
Real-Time Notifications
Real-time notifications deliver a convenient “push” update of comments in both the application and a user’s email. This allows users to stay updated on comments and conversation threads, respond in real-time, and streamline their collaboration.
Sharing and Access Permissions
Integrated sharing and access permission settings allow designers and engineers to control access to their CAD models. Users can share Onshape Documents with permissions, choosing from view-only, commenting or full editing privileges (for a trusted partner or vendor).
Simultaneous Collaboration
Only Onshape enables real-time simultaneous collaboration - allowing designers and engineers to work together on the same document at the same time. The result? Improved ability to share ideas, iterate designs and accelerate time to market.
Light User
The Light User function in the Onshape Enterprise plan lets users grant secure, limited permissions to internal or external partners for one-time feedback on a design. This feature enables fast and secure sharing and viewing of a shared CAD model while preventing accidental editing by a shared-in user, improving confident shared collaboration.
"As our company grows, Onshape has made it so much easier for me to manage our different engineering groups and review their progress in real time."
"Whenever I describe Onshape to anybody, I always say, ‘It's like the Google Docs of CAD,’ and they're instantly like, ‘Oh, that makes so much sense. Why haven't they (the CAD industry) done that already?’"