Tech Tip: Collaborating on Onshape Drawing Reviews

Onshape is a collaborative tool meant for an entire company to stay involved with the design process, rather than a more traditional “waterfall” approach where a design is passed from person to person. The social aspect of designing with Onshape is very apparent while using its built-in sharing options and commenting features.

However, when it comes to reviewing Onshape Drawings with a collaborator, the steps are slightly different. In an active workspace, only one user is allowed to edit a drawing at a time to allow that person to focus on the drawing’s details. Here is the process you should follow when doing a design review:

1) Reference a Version or Revision:

Since a drawing is being reviewed, you will want an unchanging point in time to reference. Whether it’s a version or a revision of the design, looking back at a set point in time will allow multiple people to view the same drawing simultaneously.

2) Create Comments/Tasks:

With multiple people in the same drawing, you can take advantage of assigning tasks at this point in time to communicate with the rest of the team. As you will see, these comments are history-specific and allow you to simply communicate, assign specific tasks and even include images to call out improvements.

3) Use Screenshots in Comments:

When creating a comment, you can attach an image file by clicking on the image icon toward the bottom right of the comment field. Both Mac and Windows platforms include built-in screenshot capabilities with simple markup tools to call out a drawing detail for review or fixing. This screenshot can then be uploaded right back into the Onshape comments at that point in time.

4) Utilize the Automatic History Trail Later:

Without any extra effort, the comments you are making are now tied to this specific point in the design. Weeks, months, and even years later you can go back and review this and see the conversation that occurred in context of the drawings being created. This allows for a more streamlined release/audit process rather than having to track down old emails and match them to a specific file in your database.

You can try this yourself by going back to a version of an Onshape Document, creating a comment and then returning to the main workspace. You will find that the comments do not exist in the main workspace, but when you navigate back to that version, you can continue your conversation.

Interested in learning more Onshape Tech Tips? You can review the most recent technical blogs here.