Anybody here making money with Onshape?
Paid job? Clients with money? Products to market?
I talked to a startup owner about Onshape as a possible money-saver. She didn’t go for it because sooner or later, her business was going to need ISO or similar certification and not being able to have a native data archive was too risky… auditors are very picky about traceability. She also felt that having the IP “cloud hostage” would sound unattractive to investors, don’t know if that’s really the case these days.
I have to assume that the Really Big clients whom Onshape touts have special arrangements regarding their data.
I wonder, what if you do work for a company and then want to hand off the design “files” to them? I’ve done that with SolidWorks, I wonder how that workflow works in Onshape?
Without assuming that any particular persons monitors this thread I will take the bold action to tag John McEleney. This is a very good question. John, would you please get us an answer?
Are people making money with Onshape, the answer is absolutely YES!
Wrt data - this can be handled in several ways:
Scenario #1: Customer has an Onshape account, they own the data, open a blank document and SHARE it with the contractor. They can set the properties so that the contractor cannot download the data, they cannot share it, they cannot print it … The customer can be assured that the only person who had access to the document was the contractor and themselves.
Scenario #2: The contractor has Onshape, opens a new document and shares it with the customer when they want to do a review (the customer does not have to have Onshape for comment/review - they can use the free version). Upon completion of the job, the contractor can assign ownership to the customer and the customer can remove access rights to the contractor and they will always be able view/comment on the data, however if they want to edit the documents they will need a professional version of Onshape.
Scenario #3: The contractor uses Onshape, shares the design and does several reviews with the customer (they can simply share a link, the customer does not need to own Onshape) and upon completion the contractor could export files into multiple native or standard file formats and email to customer.
I had an interesting discussion with Alex Arevalo last week and one thing that still perplexes but amazes me is the file history, how it logs every modification made as some sort of file version that you can view anytime and modify and still keep the file history. I’ve worked around with it a bit at home to test it out(like 3 hours tops) and while there are a lot of similarities to most programs, like most programs you also need some sort of course on the practical side of things.
Was kinda nervous so I tripped over most of my words while trying to have a discussion with him lol
Alex, try this. I think it is very well done. https://learn.onshape.com/
John McEleny is making money with OnShape. No surprise there. 
One of the biggest features that I like, the ability to branch a part and merge changes between multiple branches. That is huge.
I have a couple of clients that use OnShape, and it works quite well for making money in that context. You need a rock solid internet connection to not hate yourself for using it, but the data management features are a treat, and not dependent on a client having realized that PDM is a really good thing with more than one engineer on a project. I believe they offer an option to lock data to the Government Cloud on AWS, now, so it can be used for export restricted work, which wasn’t always true and is not the default option. As of the middle of last year, the drafting components were still painful to use, but the rate of improvement is pretty good, and their customer support team is very responsive. It’s been about 6 months since I last had a job that called for it, and my internet connection these days is, shall we say, temperamental, so others will have more up to date info.
[quote=“Fred Outlaw” post_id=3100 time=1617828034 user_id=414]
Onshape is making money off everyone! This isn’t SolidWorks!! This is a conspiracy. The founders were from SolidWorks. Did you know this? DID YOU KNOW!? How do I unsubscriiiiiiiibbbbbeeee???
[/quote]
What’s yer point? If you don’t like it here, you’re free to leave. If you keep going the way you are, you’ll get a push… :roll:
Well, he left. Required some assistance. If anyone is familiar with that situation, I’d appreciate a call.
Was he expecting this forum to be something different, or just a troll?
Troll. With an IP address from a certain town in MA.
Jon Ban*uer? <()>
Or, it might be a reincarnation of Frederick_Law .
In case doubts remain:
Yep, a troll. 
Geez I haven’t heard that name in a while.