Tech Tip: Navigating Onshape Data with Documents, List View, and Structure View

Onshape organizes your design data differently from traditional file-based CAD systems. At the heart of this system is the Onshape Document: a self-contained workspace containing parts, assemblies, drawings, imported files, and release data, all version-controlled and always up to date in the cloud.

Each document acts as a mini project hub, eliminating the chaos of folder hierarchies, file versions, and manual backups. Instead of hunting down the latest file version, everything lives in a single source of truth, accessible to your entire team.

For users on the Professional and Enterprise plans, Onshape also provides advanced tools to explore and manage product data across multiple documents: List view and Structure view.

Both options can be found through the Documents page in your workspace.

List View: Cross-Document Insight

The List view is ideal for getting a high-level overview of your entire product, no matter how it is distributed across Onshape Documents.

• Display the latest revision of parts, assemblies, and drawings in one unified table
• Ignore folder structure, showing only meaningful product data
• Search and filter by name, part number, revision, description, or document
• Navigate by data, not by folder location
• Available on desktop and mobile (iOS and Android) for on-the-go visibility

This view is perfect when you need to locate released parts, track released configurations, or understand the whole product landscape across multiple teams or departments.

Structure View: Product Hierarchy, Your Way

Structure view takes a hierarchical approach, showing your design from the top-level assembly down through all subassemblies and components, just like a traditional product structure.

• Display only released, revision-controlled objects and associated drawings

• Display a tree view of the BOM structure, regardless of which documents contain the data

• Help teams understand how a product fits together across projects

• Available on desktop and mobile (iOS and Android) for on-the-go visibility
  
  

Structure view is especially valuable in design reviews and release planning, where visualizing how components come together is critical.

Key Differences

Customize Your Experience

In List view and Structure view, you can customize your experience by resizing columns, reordering fields, and saving filters to focus on what matters most to your role, engineering, purchasing, QA, or manufacturing. Then save the URL as a bookmark in your browser if you want easy access again to the same filter.

Ready for Action

With Onshape Documents as the foundation and List and Structure views layered on top, your entire team gains access to your company's product data, which is all organized, searchable, and ready for action. These tools help you move beyond folders and files into a modern, connected, and database-driven design environment.

Explore the Onshape Learning Center for more insights and robust lessons on working in a cloud-native CAD environment.