Couple Onshape Questions

[MJuric]

So I've been using Onshape for a few projects at home. Nothing super complex. That being said there are things I find a bit "clunky" and am wondering if I'm using them wrong or if there are suggestions for places to look for "Tips" for better use.

1) Mates - Onshape appears to be very similar to F360 with mates. In both cases they feel difficult to navigate to me.
a) Selection - Seems to take for ever to get the right orientation position etc. The Mate connector flips to different sides, doesn't grab the right points etc. By comparison in SW, IV etc you click a surface, point etc and mate. Maybe this is an issue with a slight lag of "In the cloud", not sure.
b) Having to add a mate connector for any "Unusual" mates. This is an added step that simply doesn't exist in SW and IV. So I was trying to mate a surface to an intersection pint of a line and a non planer surface. In SW and IV I just pick the point and the planar surface. In Onshape the only way I could find to do this is to first define a mate connector which essentially means I had to do all the mate clicks twice.

2) Finding mates - In most systems I've used mates are associated with the part. Click on the part and the mate are listed under the part or highlighted in some fashion. Unless I'm missing something the only way to find what mates go with a part is to click thru the mates until it highlights the part. this seems exactly backwards to how mates are used. You "Mate parts" you don't "Part mates". This makes it extremely difficult to edit mates in assemblies with a large amount of mates. Is this another thing I'm doing wrong with mates, a setting or is this just a short coming of the software?

[bryan5]

I will be honest it was greek for me as well when I started.

My moment of clarity was after going through the tutorial and asking questions on the onshape forum site.

There are a lot of top notch Onshape users on the forum that will gladly help you.

https://forum.onshape.com/

[DennisD]

I will be honest it was greek for me as well when I started.

My moment of clarity was after going through the tutorial and asking questions on the onshape forum site.

There are a lot of top notch Onshape users on the forum that will gladly help you.

https://forum.onshape.com/

I will second that their tutorials are very well done! https://learn.onshape.com/catalog?label ... 2All%22%5D

[MJuric]

I will second that their tutorials are very well done! https://learn.onshape.com/catalog?label ... 2All%22%5D

I'll have to go thru the tutorial again. Maybe I'm just missing something.

[bryan5]

@MJuric

There is an upcoming user group meeting that will have 3 Onshape technical service engineers. This would be a good meeting to get their contact information and pose the questions you have on assembly.

https://www.onshape.com/en/user-group-n ... ofessional

[MJuric]

@MJuric

There is an upcoming user group meeting that will have 3 Onshape technical service engineers. This would be a good meeting to get their contact information and pose the questions you have on assembly.

https://www.onshape.com/en/user-group-n ... ofessional

Cool, I'll see if I can get to that.

[bryan5]

I'll put in a comment to cover assemblies at the meeting.