FULL-CLOUD CAD

WORKSHOP 1
AN INTRODUCTION
 Prepared and presented by Evan Kennedy, 2016

CONTENTS3 What is Onshape?

4 Getting Started.
5 User Interface Overview.
6 Basic Sketching.
7 Extruding to add and remove.
8 Patterning within sketch
9 Mirroring features
10 Fillet and Chamfer
11 And some more stuff.....
12 More quick stuff
13 Assembling and Mating
14 Exporting

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 Prepared and presented by Evan Kennedy, 2016

WHAT IS
ONSHAPE? WELL...
According to their website, there are 6 things you need to know
about Onshape:
• Onshape is the first full-cloud 3D CAD system. It runs in a
web browser and on any mobile device.
• Onshape uses cloud-native Documents, not files.
• You create parts in Onshape Part Studios and can have as
many Part Studios as you need in a single Document.
• Onshape Assemblies use a new, simplified approach to
mating parts.
• Onshape changes the way you collaborate. You can instantly
share Documents and simultaneously work with your peers.
• Onshape streamlines data management with built-in version
control

NOW IN ENGLISH...
Onshape is “CAD of the future”.

It runs in a web-browser, which means it can be used on any

Mac or PC.

It saves your files for you inside your Onshape account, so you
don’t need to worry about saving or losing files.

It is multi-user compatible, like Google Docs, which means

you can invite others into your files to see what you’re doing or
collaborate.

You never need to download large files, install programs or worry

about licensing.

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 Prepared and presented by Evan Kennedy, 2016

GETTING
STARTED CREATE AN ACCOUNT
Because Onshape is online, web-based and uses cloud-storage
for your files, you will need to create an account to login and use
it. To create an account, visit www.onshape.com.

Creating an account is free, but there are a few things we should

note about the free account:
• Onshape uses a public/private file system (see below for
explanation of public vs. private files).
• As a free user, you can have as many public files as you like,
and have unlimited storage space. However, you’re limited to
10 private files with a total storage allowance of 100mb.
• If you are somehow related to the education industry (I.e, you
are a teacher or student of any kind enrolled in an education
institution such as a school or university) you can sign up
for Onshape Education account (onshape.com/edu) and are
allowed unlimited private files and storage.

PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE FILES

Public files can be viewed by any Onshape user. They can view
your workspace and make a copy of it to edit it for themselves,
but cannot edit, change, remove or otherwise alter your original
workspace.

Private files only appear on your “My Documents” list, no one

else can view them or edit them at all, unless you share it with
them through use of the share function.

CREATING A FILE
Once you have created your account and logged in at
cad.onshape.com you will see some standard tutorials. You can
do these in your own time if you like. At this point, click

Select private or public file, it doesn’t matter all for this workshop,
and you can remove private files or change them to public later
if you’d like. Give it a name. Once you’ve created a file, you will
see your new Onshape CAD User Interface.

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 Prepared and presented by Evan Kennedy, 2016

USER
INTERFACE
OVERVIEW
WHAT AM I LOOKING AT?
If you’ve never done any 3D modeling or CAD before, this may
look a bit daunting, so let me break it down for you.

A Feature Tree
B Main Tool Bar
C View Control Box (VCB)
D Origin
E Base Reference Planes (BRP)
F File Management Bar
G Settings, Share, Community, Chat, Help

B
A
C

D
E

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 Prepared and presented by Evan Kennedy, 2016

BASIC LET’S START MAKING STUFF!

Follow these steps to begin making your first part.

SKETCHING
The functionality of CAD programs relies on creating
“Sketches” and using various tools to either add or remove
a solid object in reference to them.

Click the “Sketch” button on the Main Tool Bar, and you
will be asked to “Select a sketch plane”. Note that you
can create a sketch on any BRP, Plane or flat surface of an
existing object. A surface or plane will turn orange when
you hover over it. Lets choose the Top BRP.

To make it easier to see what we’re doing, let’s change our

view to the “top view”, by selecting the “Top” surface on
the VCB.

At this point, notice that the tools available on your Main

Tool bar have changed. This is because you are now in
Sketch Mode, and these are the tools we will use to draw
stuff.

Let’s start by drawing a rectangle.

Click the drop-down arrow next to the rectangle tool on
your Main Tool Bar, and you’ll see “Corner rectangle” and
“Center point rectangle”.
Experiment with both if you like.
To keep our shape centered around the Origin, to make
things neater for later on, let’s use the “Center point
rectangle” and draw a rectangle of any size.

Dimensioning!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dimensioning is the most important part of CAD, it’s what
separates it from regular 3D Modeling, and lets us input
measurements which we can use to manufacture these
parts.
Use the Dimension tool, to click the right hand side of your
rectangle, then click out in the open space somewhere,
and change this to 30mm.
Now change the top line to 55mm.
Press the green tick button to tell Onshape you’re done
with your sketch. Or you can not... Whatever.

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 Prepared and presented by Evan Kennedy, 2016

EXTRUDING TO TURN YOUR SKETCH INTO SOMETHING 3D

Follow these steps to extrude your sketch into a 3D shape,
and then cut stuff away from it

To Extrude your sketch, click on the “Extrude” button on

the Main Tool Bar. It looks like a white cube with a little
grey cube sticking out the side. If you clicked the green
tick in the last step, at this point you’ll need to select your
sketch, either by clicking on it on the main screen, or on
the Feature Tree.
Change the view either with your mouse or by clicking a
corner on the VCB.
Change the “Depth” to 30mm, and click the tick.

Create a new sketch on one of the large side faces of your

box, and use the line tool to draw a shape like the one
pictured here.
The dimension can also be used to specify distance
between two things, rather than just length of one thing.
Use the dimension tool, click on the vertical line, and then
click the right hand edge of your box, make it 25mm.
Do the same for the horizontal line and the top of your box,
make it 15mm.

Use the Extrude tool again. This time, click on “Remove”

in the Extrude options panel, and change it from “Blind” to
“Through all”.
Because our sketch has divided the face into two shapes,
a small rectangle and a backwards L shape, you’ll need to
click on the face you’d like to extrude. If you accidentally
select both, you can delete one by clicking it again, or by
pressing the small X next to it in the Extrude options panel.
Click the Tick.

Were done for this step. But, now that more things are
going on, lets turn off the vision of the BRP’s just to clean
up the screen a bit.
On the Feature Tree, hover over each of the BRP’s (Top,
Front, Right) and little eyeball will appear, click it and the
BRP will vanish.
You can still use the BRP’s for stuff by selecting them on
the Feature Tree, and you can turn the vision of them back
on the same way that we just turned it off.

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 Prepared and presented by Evan Kennedy, 2016

PATTERNING SOME MORE ADVANCED SKETCH STUFF

Lets make a sketch, and pattern it across the shape, inside

INSIDE A SKETCH the sketch.

Make a new sketch on the same side. Draw a circle using

the “Centre point circle” tool, that attaches to the bottom
edge of your shape. Use the dimension tool to set the
distance between the circles center point, and the left
hand edge of your shape to 10mm (make sure you select
the circle’s center point, not the circle itself).
Now use the dimension tool to change the diameter of the
circle to 15mm. To do this, click on the edge of the circle,
and then somewhere in open space, and input 15mm.

Click the “Linear Pattern” tool on the Main Tool Bar (4

small squares), and then click on your circle.
This will initiate a patterning sequence, which we can
control by changing some variables. Our variables are
amount of vertical and horizontal duplicates, and distance
between them.
By default, vertical duplicates is set to 1x, horizontal
duplicates is set to 3x, and distance between them is set
to 25mm. Lets change it to 1x, 2x, 35mm, respectively.
To finish your pattern, press Enter on your keyboard, and
then click in open space (weird, I know...). When you’ve
finished your sketch, press the tick!
Use the Extrude tool again to cut both of these circles out
to a depth of 5mm.

Remember to change your Extrude to “Remove”, or you’ll

end up with things sticking out, instead of holes.

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 Prepared and presented by Evan Kennedy, 2016

MIRRORING LETS KEEP THIS SHAPE SYMMETRICAL!

Lets use the Mirror tool, to copy our holes to the other side

FEATURES of the shape, and then learn about feature editing.

Choose the Mirror tool on the Main Tool Bar.

When the Mirror options panel pops up, immediately
change “Part mirror” to “Feature mirror”, if you miss this,
you’ll end up duplicating your entire shape.

Onshape now wants to know two things.

First, it wants to know which feature(s) it’s mirroring. On
your Feature Tree, select “Extrude 3” (or whatever yours is
called). You can also select the extrude by clicking on the
holes we cut on your shape instead.
Second, it wants to know where the Mirror is. We know
that a mirror is the surface smack-bang in the middle of us
and our reflection. So, we need a plane or surface that is in
the middle of our original extrude and where we want it’s
new reflection to be.
We’ll use the Front BRP! Press the Tick.

At any point in time, you can go back and edit sketches,

extrudes, or any other step on your Feature Tree.
Right click on “Extrude 3” (or whatever yours is called) on
your Feature Tree and select Edit. Lets change the Depth
from 5mm to 7mm.
Press the tick.

Because “Mirror 1” on our Feature Tree, uses “Extrude 3”

and mirrors it, you’ll notice the reflection of Extrude 3 has
also just updated to the new depth.

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 Prepared and presented by Evan Kennedy, 2016

FILLET AND A SNEAKY WAY TO MAKE THINGS LOOK GREAT.

But seriously, they do look great.

CHAMFER
Click the “Fillet” tool on the Main Tool Bar. It’s a cube with
a rounded edge.
Select an edge, and will become rounded. I chose the two
long horizontal edges, and the two vertical edges in the
middle of our shape.
Change their Radius to 6.5mm.
Press the tick.

Similar to above, let’s use the Chamfer tool (next to the

Fillet tool) to angle some edges.
Select the top, horizontal lines that are parallel to the green
Y-axis line on your VCB.
By default, the Chamfer tool makes a 45degree cut along
the edge you select. You can change this by changing
“equal distance” to “two distances”.
Let’s leave it as “equal distance” and change the Distance
to 2mm.
Press the tick.

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 Prepared and presented by Evan Kennedy, 2016

AND SOME INCASE YOU DON’T SEE IT....

We’re making a sort of blocky, old school steam train.

MORE STUFF Without step by step instructions, see if you can do what
I’ve done below. Ask as many questions as you need...

I’ve cut out a window hole.

The window is 15mm wide, 10mm high, sits 4mm down
from the top of the train roof, and sits 2mm from the back
of the train.

I’ve made my window look cooler somehow...

Hint: 5mm.

I’ve added headlights. 6mm diameter. 1mm depth. They

share the centrepoint with the curved corners of the front
of the train.

I also made a chimney flute thing. The long part is 6mm

diameter, and it’s center point is 20mm away from the
windshield. It’s 15mm tall.
The top part is a backwards extrude, 4mm deep, of a 10mm
diameter circle, with a 2mm chamfered bottom edge.

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 Prepared and presented by Evan Kennedy, 2016

MORE QUICK LETS ADD SOME WHEELS

We’ll use the circular pattern tool to make some cool

STUFF wheels before we assemble them onto the train.

On the File Management Bar, choose the “+” and then

“Create Part Studio”.

Inside Part Studio 2, let’s make a wheel for our train.

Make a cylinder that is 13.5mm diameter, and extrude it

8mm out from the Right BRP.

Now lets make it look like a wheel, with some spokes.

Make a new sketch on the face of the wheel, and draw two
circles that are coincentric with the wheel. One at 3mm,
and one at 11mm.

Draw a line from the top/center of the smaller circle, to the

top/center of the larger one.

Draw a second line from the centrepoint of the circles, to

the larger circle, just to the right of the first line, at about
“1 o’clock”.

Now, lets use the “Dimension” tool to set the angle

between the lines to 25 Degrees. Then use the “Trim” tool
to snip off the bottom part of the line.

Choose the “Circular pattern” tool on your Main Toolbar (in

the dropdown box next to the rectangle pattern tool).

Select the two lines, and they will start duplicating and
spinning around the circles they are attached to. You can
control their quantity by changing the “3x” box to however
many you want, let’s make it 5x.

Click away from the drawing to accept the pattern and

now extrude/remove your spoke holes!

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 Prepared and presented by Evan Kennedy, 2016

ASSEMBLING LETS JOIN OUR WHEELS

Let’s use the assembly and mate functions to join our
wheels to the train.

On the File Management Bar, access “Assembly 1”.

Use the “Insert” tool on the Main Toolbar to insert your

trian body once, and your wheel once. It’s okay if they are
placed in the wrong orientations.

Select the “Fastened Mate” tool from the Main Tool bar
(looks like a cylinder with a straight join in the middle).

The mate tools ask us to select two points, which Onshape

will join together for us.

To select a point, hover over your objects and a few white

dots will appear. You can hover over these white dots and
a little Pacman logo with some coloured lines will appear.
When selecting a point for the mate, pay close attention
to which way the BLUE line on the funny Pacman logo is
facing. When we select a second point, it will join the two
blue lines together.

Select the centre point of the wheel. The blue line should
be sticking out perpendicular to the face of the wheel.

Rotate your camera around so you can see inside the

wheel arc. Select the centrepoint of the wheel arc (the
middle of the line at the bottom of the wheel arc).

If the wheel is now facing the wrong way, choose the “Flip
Primary Axis” tool on the mate popup window.

Now insert another 3 copies of the wheel, and mate them

to the other wheel arcs in the same way.

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 Prepared and presented by Evan Kennedy, 2016

EXPORTING WE’RE DONE!

Lets just export this train for 3D Printing, and then call it
a day....

On the File Management Bar, right click on Assembly 1,

and choose “Export”.

Change the “Format” to “STL”.

Then, change the “Resolution” to “Fine”. When printing,

this severely effects curves. This resolution, for example,
dictates how many tiny straight edges make up your curve
in the STL file.

Click “Ok”, and in a few seconds, it will download the STL

file into your downloads folder, ready for you to import into
a 3D Printer slicing program... A lesson for another day.

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