Has anyone used OnShape to create projects that you’ve actually printed? How streamlined was the process? These tricks should help with higher quality final results, but I’d be interested to see real world results.
Yes. In the shop we use Solidworks, but I teach a 3D printing class to middle school students at a local public school. When I started, the school district said they would not purchase Solidworks seats but I should teach Onshape. I groaned, more software to learn! But it turned out to be surprisingly easy if you already know Solidworks. Reportedly, the engineers who created Onshape are the same group of engineers who created Solidworks more than 20 years ago, so there are many similarities.
Note that the videos on the Onshape web site assume you already know CAD. Completely useless for teaching 6th, 7th and 8th graders who are new to CAD. I ended up adapting lessons from my Solidworks Essentials textbook.
Direct answers to your questions:
(1) Yes, my students and I have 3D printed hundreds of projects that were designed in Onshape.
(2) Hard to answer “streamlined”. That term is normally used as a comparison between one way of doing things versus another way. Onshape is roughly equivalent to Solidworks in terms of ease of use and effectiveness of results. There are a couple things you can’t do, for example you can’t do a text wrap extrusion in Onshape, and it doesn’t have a hole wizard or thread library. The latency due to it being cloud based can be a little annoying, especially if you have an entire school hogging internet bandwidth at a point in time. But it is a good program and I recommend it to my customers (WAY better than say, Sketchup or Tinkercad for example).
Great writeup. Thanks, @American_3D_Printing !
@Cliff_Bramlett I’ve heard good things about OnShape. Regardless of the software being used to create your objects here are some additional pointers that will affect your real world results.
- Know the capability of your machine and the tolerances it can hold to.
- Know the thermal behavior of the material you are printing with.
- Design with clearances that match the tolerances and calibrate your filament to match.
How Streamlined the use of any particular software is will be in part related what you are familiar with and how your brain works. I use several programs interchangeably and will pick one over another depending on what I’m trying to do. Makes no difference to me what software is being used to get a precision print off any given printer with any given filament I’m using.
Thanks @Jeff_Parish . I’ve learned literally thousands of software packages over the years, and hundreds of graphics / CAD packages to an expert level. I’m tired of it. At this point I just want one that will work for moving models to 3D print. Thanks for the feedback!
@Cliff_Bramlett I know what you mean. For 3D printing I look for ones that make it easy to export AND import STL files for direct manipulation. I take it this is the streamlining you are looking for. While most programs have some straightforward method for exporting STL’s not many have a smooth workflow for importing and removing the triangulation. Not to give you another program to learn but trueSpace does a superb job at both. I’ve not tried OnShape to compare on that feature but then I’ve not had the need. Might have to try it out for learning sake. 
Oh, what I really want is a really good modeler with a built in slicer…
Exactly, on that last point. And thanks, I’ll look into TrueSpace.