Download the Onshape Mobile App

IOS Android

CAD Customization with Onshape FeatureScript

Build, Test, and Deploy Custom CAD Tools at Scale.

How Does Onshape Help Engineering Teams Build Reusable CAD Tools Tailor-Made For Their Specific Workflows?

Onshape deploys a well documented programming language, Featurescript, used natively to develop standard features. Custom features use the same mechanism used by standard features, allowing for more robust custom features to exist alongside standard features.

Custom Features regenerate reliably like standard features and upgrade when Onshape upgrades. No maintenance downtime required for fixing broken customizations. Users build custom features in Feature Studios and deploy them in Part Studios. With Built-in PDM, custom features can be maintained like product data.

Custom Features can condense complex, multi-step geometric operations into a single, intuitive dialog box. They can codify proprietary algorithms to generate complex surfaces, lattice structures, or specialized patterns allowing engineering teams to rapidly iterate on intricate geometry that would be time-consuming or difficult to achieve with just standard parametric tools.

Because Featurescript is openly documented, LLMs utilized by agents such as Claude are already trained to generate accurate Featurescript. Featurescript MCP servers allow engineers to prompt AI agents to build, test and deploy powerful, bespoke custom features without the need to learn a new programming language.

Build Robust Custom Tools

Onshape treats custom features as first-class citizens. They regenerate reliably like standard tools and upgrade automatically with every release, eliminating maintenance downtime and manual fixes.

Work Faster & Automate Repetitive Tasks

Condense complex, multi-step operations into intuitive, automated tasks. Reduce manual effort to refocus your engineering team on high-value innovation and rapid iteration.

Eliminate Errors and Standardize Designs

Enforce design consistency and engineering accuracy by embedding company standards directly into custom features. This minimizes human error, ensures uniform methodology, and guarantees adherence to quality specifications.

Create Sophisticated CAD tools

Leverage FeatureScript to create powerful, custom CAD tools tailored to your specific needs. This enables the design of complex geometries like intricate surfaces, lattice structures, and specialized patterns that would be difficult to achieve without additional codified logic.

Key Features

Feature Studios and Part Studios

An integrated development environment specifically engineered for CAD customization, allowing you to write, test, and debug custom features in real-time. By providing a sandbox environment directly connected to the Part Studios, it enables you to iterate, deploy and maintain custom features with git-like version control built-in.

FeatureScript MCP

Democratize CAD development by integrating AI agents via MCP servers. This allows engineers of all skill levels to rapidly generate, test, and iterate on powerful, custom features through natural language, removing the technical barrier of learning a complex programming language.

Featurescript Co-Complete

Coding experts can accelerate development cycles with intelligent code completion that suggests syntax, functions, and parameters in real-time. By minimizing manual typing and reducing syntax errors, this feature helps you write robust, bug-free custom features faster, allowing you to focus on logic rather than syntax.

Access Control for Custom Features

Custom Features are shared instantly across shared workspaces, eliminating traditional IT deployment bottlenecks and ensuring enterprise-wide version consistency and a single source of truth for specialized design logic. Published Custom Features are shared publicly and appear in the FeatureScript Library fostering collaboration and reuse.

Custom Feature Spotlight

Get started and discover the possibilities by exploring these FeatureScript samples.

  • Wire Routing

    This set of custom features provide a process-driven cable and wiring suite that takes a CSV file input from a 2D electrical schematic package, manages the routing of the cables/wires and produces wire length tables.

    View Feature
  • Mold Design

    This set of custom features creates core and cavity geometry for injection molding and die cast tooling.

    View Feature
  • HVAF Profile

    This custom feature creates a standard airfoil profile using two splines for the lower and upper surfaces. Tangency at the leading edge is guaranteed.

    View Feature
  • Lighten

    This custom feature removes material specified by sketch regions to make parts lighter. The sketch regions are extruded, offset, and fileted based on the desired remaining wall thickness and the radius of the cutting tool.

    View Feature
  • Snap Hook

    This custom feature creates a snap hook - a common fastening feature in plastic part design.

    View Feature
  • Mounting Boss

    This custom feature creates a hardware boss. Three different types of bosses are possible: Hardware (a screw boss with a pocket for the screw head and a through hole for the threads), Hole (a plain boss with a hole in the top), and Pin (a boss with a pin protuding from the top).

    View Feature
  • Auto Layout

    This custom feature automatically performs a basic nesting of planar parts onto cut sheets of specified dimensions, maintaining at least the specified spacing between parts.

    View Feature
  • Thread Creator

    Creates mathematically accurate screw threads. Supports standard, acme, square profiles as well as multi-start screws.

    View Feature
  • Port Feature

    This custom feature creates SAE J1926 straight thread ports.

    View Feature
  • Fill Pattern

    This custom feature patterns geometry within a target face while avoiding exterior boundaries and other specified keepout areas.

    View Feature
  • Ray Tracer

    This custom feature simulates a ray of light reflecting off objects and refracting through them.

    View Feature
  • Spur Gear

    This custom feature creates mathematically correct spur gears with optional center bore hole and keyway.

    View Feature
  • Belt

    This custom feature creates a belt around any number of pulleys.

    View Feature
  • Parametric Surface

    Creates a surface driven by an equation of the form z = f(x,y) or z = f(r, th).

    View Feature
  • Parametric Curve

    This feature allows you to add a custom 3D curve described by parametric equations in Cartesian, cylindrical, or spherical coordinates.

    View Feature
  • Straight Spline Feature

    This custom feature creates an SAE Standard Straight Spline on the end of shafts.

    View Feature
“FeatureScript lets us embed our building logic directly into the CAD system. It’s not just modeling, it’s programming a building.”
Ethan Keller, Design Automation Lead at Reframe Systems
“We can do a full frame in less than a half hour. In previous systems, that took over a day. It’s a really big headache. This is my favorite FeatureScript in Onshape. It’s a huge time saver for us.”
Rhett Robinson, CAD Engineer at Trek

Explore More

Kickstart your FeatureScript journey with these guides and tips.

Master Custom Feature Creation with Official Guides and Live AI Tools

FeatureScript Fundamentals Course Feature Studio Documentation

Got Questions?

For more answers or to ask a question, head over to the Onshape Forum.

Design Custom Features for Your CAD Workflows

Get Started Now