CAD Tech Support Has Never Been Easy, Until Now

TL;DR: Traditional CAD support is painfully slow and complex. Users spend hours reporting bugs through resellers (VARs), uploading files to FTP servers, and waiting days or weeks for fixes that may never arrive. Onshape, a cloud-native CAD and PDM platform, eliminates these pain points with support tools, direct developer access, instant file sharing, and automatic updates that deploy fixes within hours. The result: Zero downtime, no manual patching, and support that actually works.

The CAD Support Crisis: Why Getting Help is So Hard

Your 3D CAD software is generally an order of magnitude more complex than any other business software your company relies on right now. It’s complex in that it is difficult to use, and it’s complex due to all the millions of lines of code and mathematical calculations that run in the background. That’s why it takes considerable time to become proficient at using 3D CAD, and why things can go wrong quite often and quite spectacularly. When you’re considering a new CAD system, training and support should not be an afterthought – they are an essential part of any CAD implementation.

Two Types of CAD Support Issues

There are two different types of CAD support calls:

• “How do I?” questions that are training-related queries about features and design workflows.
• “I can’t do my work” reports like critical bugs, crashes, and data corruption issues.

Let’s deal with the second category first. Because CAD is so complex, finding the cause of a crash, recovering corrupt data or resolving some other job-stopping event is an almost impossible task. You have to have some level of sympathy for the support person who is desperately trying to help you. Unfortunately, when these types of events frequently repeat themselves, sympathy flies out the window fairly quickly.

Tech Tip: How to Submit Effective Onshape Improvement Requests

What Causes CAD Software to Crash?

There are numerous reasons why finding the root cause of an error is difficult. Every user uses CAD differently. They work in different industries, designing their own unique products and there are multiple ways to model the same thing. One user may extrude and add fillets, while another may revolve a sketched profile. One combination of actions may crash the software and another may not.

The end result is the same, but the path chosen to get there is different every time.

This makes it impossible for CAD developers to predict how the software will be used and therefore impossible to predict when and where the software will fail.

Software vs. Hardware-Related Crashes

Crashes are either caused by either:

• The software, which is easier to trace and fix when reproducible.
• The hardware, such as the computer, operating system, graphics card, and the biggest culprit of all, the drivers.

Hardware-related crashes are a game of cat-and-mouse. Developers can’t replicate issues unless they build an exact copy of your machine with identical specifications, which is impossible and prohibitively expensive.

The Certified Hardware Trap

To this end, CAD vendors provide certified lists of supported hardware platforms, specifying:

• Operating system version and service pack number
• Graphics card type and driver version
• CPU brand and hardware manufacturer
• Specific workstation models

These lists limit your hardware options and often require expensive workstation purchase. Worse, they serve as a convenient excuse for support teams: Not using certified hardware? “Sorry, can’t help you!”

So what should you do when you see the dreaded crash report dialog? That’s a good question, and apparently, the answer is not as straightforward as you might think.

Typical Vendor Response for Dealing With a Crash

In a blog post, SOLIDWORKS details their support process and recommends that you print out their support flowchart and pin it to your office wall. Yup, you read that correctly. Having problems? Consult your flowchart!

The Crash Report Black Hole

The crash report screen sends a “stack trace” to your CAD vendor. Most crashes seem random and aren’t reproducible – all you can do is shrug and recover your lost data. If it happens consistently, you need to call your Value-Added Reseller (VAR). The crash report won’t help; it’ll likely end up on a “must fix someday” list.

The VAR Support Marathon

Once you initiate a support call, you’ll detail the problem, download screen-sharing software, share all your design files, and send complete computer specifications. Getting files to your VAR means collecting everything, ZIPping them up, and uploading to an FTP site. Then it’s a waiting game. By the time you get a response, those files may be out-of-date or you’ve found a workaround. Point blank: You simply can’t afford to halt a project while a problem is being investigated.

Three Possible Outcomes

This takes enormous effort and is probably why so many bugs go unreported. Here’s your Catch-22: If you don’t report a bug, it won’t get fixed. If you do, by the time it gets fixed, it may no longer be relevant.

Your VAR may respond with:

1. Additional training required
2. Your data needs modification
3. The software needs modification

That third option may take months, years, or never happen. Once shipped in a service pack, you must download, install, test, and check for regressions. If the fix is in the next major release, you may not be able to install it if it puts you on a different version than your customers and suppliers.

Surely, there must be an easier way to get support.

How Onshape Set a New Standard in Tech Support

Onshape is the only product development platform that runs entirely in the cloud. Its unique database architecture enables you to access your design data from anywhere on any device, either through a web browser on a computer (Mac, PC, Linux, Chromebook) or via dedicated apps for iOS and Android devices.

Hardware Problems? Eliminated.

The complex calculations required to run CAD are carried out on Onshape servers in the cloud. The local web browser displays menus using JavaScript and graphics using WebGL – technologies well supported in modern browsers. This delivers device independence that immediately eliminates almost all hardware-related issues. In the unlikely event you experience a hardware issue, you can carry on working on another computer until we resolve it.

Support Made Simple

If you need help with a geometry problem or think you’ve identified a bug, getting help couldn’t be easier. Just click “Contact Support” from inside Onshape and describe the issue with text and on-screen markup tools. Since Onshape stores all design data in the cloud, there are no CAD files to send. Enable “Share this document with Onshape support” and click “Send” – that's it. The support team gets direct access to your design data.

Direct Developer Access

One benefit of dealing directly with Onshape, rather than an intermediary VAR, is that the support team uses the same diagnostic tools as the development team and has direct access to user-generated logs. Bugs can be quickly identified, diagnosed, addressed and deployed without you doing anything – no downloading hotfixes, no patching, no regression testing. Furthermore, bugs identified as high priority can be fixed and deployed within hours to every user worldwide. This is only possible with Onshape’s unique database architecture.

Onshape Never Crashes

Finally, it should be noted that Onshape never crashes. Yes, this is a bold statement. To clarify, while software crashes may still occasionally occur, our users never experience them. If there is a crash, you will most likely not even notice. Each user session is supported by multiple servers – if one fails, another takes over in milliseconds. Your data is automatically saved every time you make a design change so even if you suffer a power outage you can pick up your phone or tablet and carry on where you left off.

This unique support mechanism, like everything else in Onshape, was an important consideration right from the very start and was integrated directly into the product to make life easier for our customers.

Traditional CAD Support vs. Modern CAD Support

Modern CAD, Modern Support

Traditional CAD support is broken. The multi-layered process wastes valuable engineering time. Onshape, a modern CAD system, fundamentally reimagines support by eliminating the friction points.

This unique support mechanism, like everything else in Onshape, was an important consideration right from the very start and was integrated directly into the product to make life easier for our customers.

Regardless of which product design tools your company is using right now, you should demand that their bar for customer support is as high as Onshape’s. Want a basis for comparison? Give Onshape a test drive today.

(This blog was originally published May 9, 2019.)