How to Onboard Your FIRST Robotics Team Using Onshape

In any FIRST program, the ability to iterate on robot designs quickly and collaboratively is a necessity. Onshape is a free tool for robotics teams that meets both of these needs. Being new to CAD or changing what CAD software you are using can be daunting, which is why we have this blog post to help you set up your FIRST Team in Onshape as well as explore some great features that Onshape offers!

Get Your Robotics Team Set Up With Onshape

You first need to create an Onshape classroom for your team, which will own all of the design data your team uses. Please note that your team and mentors do not need to be associated with a school to access the Onshape Educator plan as long as Onshape is being used for educational purposes.

Here are the steps to create your Onshape classroom:

1. Create a shared email for CAD usage within your team. This is not required, but is useful if you want multiple mentors to have access to the account that owns the classroom.
2. Click this link to sign up for the Onshape Educator plan. We recommend using the shared team email, but this is not required.
3. When prompted to enter a classroom name, use your team name, e.g., “Red Hawk Robotics” or “FRC team XXX.”
4. For website, school name, and department name, you may use information from your sponsoring school or from your team’s website.

If your robotics team already has an Onshape account but is not a part of the Educator program, fill out this form to upgrade to an Educator account and gain instant access!

Now that your classroom has been created, each member of your team must create an Onshape account.

Please note that mentors should be on the Educator plan, but will not use their personal classroom created during this process. We recommend that mentors name the resulting classroom after their name to prevent any confusion about which classroom is theirs and which is being used by the team.

To add team members to your classroom, click your profile in the top-right corner and select your team’s classroom settings in the dropdown. Then, enter users' email addresses in the Add Users text box. We recommend giving fellow mentors admin permissions and keeping students as members.

When creating documents for your team, we recommend having all documents owned by the classroom as opposed to having individual team members own the documents. This helps simplify document management.

For more information on the Onshape Educator Plan and its advantages, we recommend reading this blog post.

Utilizing Onshape’s Structure and Data Management Tools

Once you’ve created your classroom, it’s time to create folders to share with your team. Most teams create folders for each game year and the project they are working on.

To create and share a folder, do the following:

1. Make sure that the classroom filter option is selected in the documents page. Doing this first ensures that the folder you create is owned by the classroom.
2. Press the blue “Create” button on the top-left of your screen.
3. Select “Folder,” name the folder, and then click “Create.”
4. Right-click the folder and select “Share.”
5. Click on the “Classrooms” option, choose the Classroom name, give all proper permissions (including Link!), and click “Share.”

You now have a folder that is owned by and shared with your robotics team.

If you own old documents or folders that you would like to transfer to your team, you can do this by right-clicking on them and selecting “Transfer ownership.” Selecting your classroom in the dialogue box will make the classroom the owner of your document or folder.

Teams have varying methods of organizing their files in Onshape. We recommend checking out this video by FRC Team 3847, Spectrum, which explains how to successfully organize your robot design

Teaching Members Robotics Using CAD

Before designing that award-winning robot, team members will need to learn the fundamental concepts of parametric modeling.

Fortunately, the Onshape Learning Center contains several self-paced courses and learning pathways. We highly recommend the CAD Basics Learning Pathway and the Onshape Fundamentals: CAD course to anyone new to CAD. For more robotics-focused lessons, check out our CAD for Robotics Learning Pathway.

We also highly recommend checking out the resources at FRCDesign.org, an official education partner of Onshape. This community-created resource provides extremely detailed learning courses focused on learning FRC design paradigms. Whether you’re new to Onshape or an experienced designer looking to brush up on your skills before the next kickoff, FRCDesign.org will have materials for you.

Leveraging Part Libraries in Onshape

When assembling your robot in CAD, it is important to include the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components that will be used to build a robot. This will ensure custom components are dimensioned correctly, space is allocated correctly, and weight estimations are accurate.

Members of the FIRST community have developed solutions for sharing many of the commonly used COTS components in FRC and FTC, saving you hours of work over the course of a FIRST season!

FIRST Robotics Competition: A group of students and mentors in the FRC community worked together to develop a parts library for FRC teams called MKCAD Library. They developed a collection of public documents containing commonly used components. One of our favorite MKCAD features is KrayonCAD – a subgroup of simplified robot components that you can use to quickly experiment with different robot architectures. Click here to learn more about MKCAD.

FIRST Tech Challenge: FTC Team 2901 developed a library of common components used by FTC teams. View this video for information on how to utilize this library.

Learning and Working Together in Onshape

Making sure every team member is on the same page at the same time is crucial to success.

Onshape is a collaborative tool that helps teams thrive in project-based competitions. Your team can work on the same part or assembly simultaneously without fear of data loss.

You can right-click and select “Add comment” on any face, edge, vertex, feature, or instance. You can give design feedback and tag teammates in the comments.

If team members want to build variations or experiment with a mechanism, branching in Onshape enables design changes without impacting the original design. Check out this Tech Tip for more information about using branches.

Onshape’s mobile app makes it easy to show and debug problems between CAD and the real world. Whether you are making a quick run to the hardware store or are working in your fabrication space, the ability to take your designs everywhere enables you to continuously refer to your team’s single source of truth and check the impact of any modifications.

As the saying goes, measure twice, cut once!

Accessing Standard Content in Onshape

There’s no need to design every nut, bolt, and washer from scratch or import them from a supplier. Onshape’s Standard Content is a collection of fasteners that you can insert inside your assembly.

After you have some parts modeled and assembled in Onshape, select “Insert” and then the “Standard Content” option on the far right. Once you have found a component you want, select “Insert.” There’s also an auto-size button if you forgot the size of a hole. Check out this Tech Tip on Standard Content for more information!

Taking Advantage of Onshape’s Custom Features

Onshape’s FeatureScript allows designers to create custom features/tools that can be used to help finish 3D models faster. These custom features can be created by anyone and shared with anyone. These tools can be used to greatly speed up the design team. I have listed some of my favorite custom features and FeatureScript libraries below:

• Julia's FeatureScript: Tube Converter, Fillet All Edges, Extrude Individual
• Origin Cube FeatureScript
• Belt and Chain Generator FeatureScript
• Alex’s FeatureScript: Robot Spacer
• Lighten FeatureScript

To add these custom features to your toolbar, you must first click one of the links above to open the document with FeatureScript. After the page is fully loaded, you will see a custom features button at the top of your screen. When you click this button, a tab will pop up with a list of custom features available in the given document. Simply click on the features you want, and they will be added to your toolbar!

For more info on how to use custom features, check out this link.

Importing Old CAD System Data to Onshape

If you are a veteran team, you probably have useful files from an old CAD system that you’d like to use again or reference.

If you are looking to get an assembly and its parts inside Onshape, try to export a “Pack and Go” option from your old CAD system. If that’s not possible, you can create a folder with the same name as the top-level assembly, put all of your parts and subassemblies inside the folder, and ZIP it. With your ZIP file, click on “Create” from the Onshape Documents page, select “Import” and then “split into multiple documents” to preserve your assembly’s structure with links.

This import method makes it easy to reuse and edit existing parts rather than starting from scratch.

Read the Importing Data technical briefing in the Learning Center for more on migrating design files to Onshape from your old CAD system.

Additional Resources to Ensure Team Success

If your school IT department needs URLs, IP addresses, and emails to whitelist so your team can work with school emails and on campus networks, read our Security and IT Checklist.

If you or your team have any other questions, check out the Onshape Forums, our Help Documentation, and Learning Center.

Best of luck to your team during the competition, and happy designing!

(This article was first published November 9, 2018, and updated September 16, 2025.)