Kestrel: Bulk Migration from SOLIDWORKS to Onshape

How difficult is it to migrate existing CAD models and assemblies into a new CAD platform? It’s one of the first questions engineering teams ask when evaluating a CAD transition. While migrating years of designs, drawings, assemblies, and metadata can seem daunting, it's far from impossible.

In fact, more and more teams are successfully moving to Onshape's cloud-native product development platform and realizing the benefits of modern CAD without abandoning their existing design data.

To assist teams in this process, Onshape is excited to announce the launch of Kestrel, a migration app developed by SmartBench Software in partnership with the Onshape team.

What is Kestrel?

Kestrel is an installed desktop application that facilitates migrating SOLIDWORKS models and their metadata to Onshape.

It simplifies the import process by allowing you to import models in bulk, preserve metadata, prevent file duplication, and create PDFs of your drawings.

How Can I Access Kestrel?

Kestrel is accessible through the Onshape App Store for download as a free, connected desktop app. Authenticate the application with your Onshape account to begin moving models into your Onshape company.

Note: Kestrel is only available on Professional, Enterprise, and equivalent plans such as Startup and Pro Discovery.

How to Migrate Existing CAD Data with Kestrel

Kestrel is a highly configurable tool that enables companies to map metadata from SOLIDWORKS to Onshape. You can choose what defines uniqueness, whether it be part name, part number, file path, or another unique identifier. By default, Kestrel uses the file path as the unique identifier.

In addition, companies have full control over metadata mappings for parts, assemblies, and drawings. Kestrel connects to your Onshape company and provides a full list of your Onshape properties, which are then mapped to SOLIDWORKS property names. This helps properly associate metadata and provides additional context when importing compared with traditional import methods, enabling you to get production-ready CAD data faster.

Once you have Kestrel configured, select the files you want to migrate with the Add Files button.

When completed, click Save Runfile, open SOLIDWORKS, and run the provided macro. This macro augments the provided run file to include metadata for the new CAD files you selected, preparing them for migration. You’ll see a list of your selected files marked “Pending” after the run file finishes updating.

Switch into the Onshape Upload tab and select the location in your Onshape company folder structure that you wish to import your SOLIDWORKS data to. Clicking Start Migration begins the migration process, and Kestrel handles the rest. It imports all selected files into Onshape, preserving any associated metadata and eliminating duplicate components used in multiple assemblies.

How Kestrel Makes CAD Migration Easier

Kestrel is not meant to replace Onshape’s importing capabilities, but rather to augment them for teams that wish to preserve even more of their company infrastructure during their migration from SOLIDWORKS to Onshape. The following are just a few benefits that companies can recognize by using Kestrel:

• Bulk migration of your data into Onshape while preserving valuable metadata and applying it to your new Onshape document, rather than requiring manual or semi-manual entry for your entire library.
• Prevents duplicate parts and assemblies at the company level by storing all imported results in the Kestrel web portal. This library is shared across your entire company infrastructure, providing even more intelligence to the migration process.
• Re-mapping relationships between parts and assemblies with their associated drawings as PDFs. It is always best to maintain a native relationship between CAD and associated drawings, so it is recommended to recreate any drawings directly in Onshape. A PDF serves as a historical record of the last revision created in SOLIDWORKS.
• It is a public app in the Onshape App Store, so the automation it uses does not make any API calls against your company’s API allocation.

Onshape is excited to offer Kestrel’s capabilities to any company that needs assistance with migrating from SOLIDWORKS to Onshape.

For more information about migrating from SOLIDWORKS to Onshape, visit the Onshape Migration Station for tips and tricks, along with customer testimonials.