Onshape is the only Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product development platform that combines CAD, built-in PDM, real-time collaboration tools, and business analytics. The unique architecture of the software has great potential in academic research and teaching in engineering, including but not limited to the following topics:
- Research in individual design behaviour
- Research in synchronous collaboration with CAD
- Research in the characteristics of CAD models
- Teaching engineering science concepts with interactive models
With its SaaS architecture, Onshape enables both unintrusive data collection and efficient data access, scalable for large-scale experiments and studies. This Onshape Research Guide aims to provide an introduction to some of the most popular sources of data in Onshape that may support academic research and teaching, along with a few sample projects and analysis methods. If you would like to open-source your research method and/or sample project that relates to Onshape and want to be featured in this guide, please submit a pull request to this GitHub repository with details of the method/project.
This guide was initially built in collaboration between PTC Education and the Ready Lab at the University of Toronto. For all publications that are benefited by this guide, please cite this repository:
Yuanzhe Deng, Elizabeth DaMaren, Alison Olechowski & Matthew Mueller. (2022). Onshape Research Guide (v1.0). University of Toronto. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6957769
NOTE: this guide is only aimed to serve and be used as an introduction to the technologies for the Onshape research community. We do not assure the technical accuracy of all details included in this guide, especially as improvements and updates are released continuously to the product. If you encounter any issue with the guide, but please feel free to report the issue to this GitHub repository.
Enterprise Analytics
Every Onshape Enterprise account automatically comes with the Analytics portal. As users make edits and commit actions in an Onshape document, the history of these user behaviour is automatically logged in a chronological order. Researchers and teachers can build dashboards to gain an overview of the enterprise. Through exporting the action history in the form of an audit trail, one can study these logged actions by essentially rebuilding the design process for research analysis.
Onshape Enterprise Analytics enables the examniation of all actions in the design process.
REST API
Onshape uses REST APIs to communicate with third party systems. With a library of API endpoints available on Glassworks, one can easily retrieve information from and make updates to an Onshape document. Further, establishing computational workflows with API calls allows scalable research analysis to a large amount of documents and data. Some applications of the REST API include: design analysis of the feature tree of the product, engineering analysis with CAD models, machine learning with CAD geometries, etc.
The REST API provides efficient access to the design product.