Branching & Merging in CAD
Incorporate new ideas faster, exploring more CAD designs in a more collaborative way.
Incorporate new ideas faster, exploring more CAD designs in a more collaborative way.
CAD and PDM for Agile Teams
Onshape enables a new paradigm of working for CAD designers, where multiple engineers can experiment simultaneously with design variations without fear of disrupting each other's work. This enables fair collaboration and conflict-free environments where the best ideas win.
Branching and merging workflows enable teams to be more agile by allowing experimentation on different design options without compromising the ongoing design effort. As ideas on different branches mature and become viable, they can be selectively merged back into the main design branch.
Key Features
Cloud-Native, Data-Driven
With a unique cloud-native architecture, Onshape delivers a data-driven, built-in PDM solution. Unlike legacy CAD software, exploring designs in Onshape does not result in multiple copies of files, so you never have to deal with the file-management hassles of duplication, or moved or renamed files.
Unique to Onshape, branching and merging works without forced PDM check-in and check-out restrictions, enabling teams to safely work faster in independent workspaces without ever having to wait for CAD access.
Branching
In Onshape, you do your modeling in workspaces, regardless of whether you are working with parts, assemblies or drawings. The process of creating a new workspace from a version of your CAD model is called branching.
A branch is not another file or a copy to maintain. Rather, it’s a pointer to the original CAD model version where the branch originated.
Team members can explore alternative ideas without affecting others by creating branches and selectively merging the best elements from multiple designs back into the main design.
Selective Merge
When working with lots of branches and changes across many different Part Studios, assemblies, drawings and other tabs, it is sometimes difficult to know exactly what effect a merge will have on your Document.
When you start a merge operation, Onshape will provide you with a new interface to help you understand the effects of merging one branch with another. This will make it possible to allow for selective merge operations at the solid or surface level.
Comparisons
Compare is a powerful tool that gives the designer a visual depiction of what’s different between two models, in addition to a list of feature differences, enabling designers to quickly identify what has changed, when and why.
Onshape allows you to compare two moments in history, two versions, or even two branches. Additionally, you can compare imported parts, stock parts and various configurations of parts and assemblies.
Once changes between branches of the design have been identified, they can be merged back into the main design and team members see the updates live.
Conflict
Onshape turns conflicts into opportunities for creativity, offering collaboration tools to help teams identify, discuss, and think through solutions.
Trying to merge designs with conflicts using file-based CAD is a very manual process, fraught with the potential for human error. Onshape automatically handles merging with just the selection of the two desired branches.
Onshape will never break your assembly, and you can always restore to an earlier version of your design at any time.
Explore More
Once you try agile CAD software with flexible branching and merging, you’ll never want to return to “the old way” of working again.
Tech Tip: Branching Designs
10.05.2015
Watch this video to learn about Onshape Branching, a powerful feature that lets you experiment with design variations without altering your original model.
テクニカルヒントを読む
Design Projects with Git-Style Branching & Merging
10.17.2019
In this webinar we look at the built-in data management tools in Onshape and how Branching and Merging can be used for more than just design exploration.
今すぐ見る
Tech Tip: A Guide to Successful Merging in Onshape
01.19.2021
Learn how to use Onshape’s Merging feature for better design collaboration.
テクニカルヒントを読む
Tech Tip: Branching Designs
10.05.2015
Watch this video to learn about Onshape Branching, a powerful feature that lets you experiment with design variations without altering your original model.
テクニカルヒントを読む
Managing Design Teams with Branching & Merging
07.05.2018
This webinar focuses on the GitHub-style data management tools in Onshape and how Branching and Merging can be used for more than just design exploration.
今すぐ見る
Learn How Easy it is to Branch and Merge Designs in Onshape.



With Onshape, we can have a baseline design for the payload scaffolding, and from there, we can create all sorts of different payloads that branch off in different directions. If we like an improvement in one of those branches, we can easily merge it into all our other versions. Having a background in software development, I’ve always found this kind of workflow much easier.
