Image: Escher
Though computer-aided design software is increasingly moving to a cloud-based, subscription-service model, founders of three-year-old CAD company Onshape Inc. say they offer the first fully-cloud-based, three-dimensional design software.
“The roughly $9 billion CAD market remains very fragmented and stuck in the old desktop paradigm,” said Jon Hirschtick, Onshape founder and chairman of the board. (Hirschtick and fellow Onshape founder John McEleney started CAD company SolidWorks in the early 1990s.) Other companies, notably Autodesk, Dassault Systemes, and PTC, include CAD-in-the-cloud offerings and also make desktop software. Onshape differs from these in that its software exists fully in the cloud and can be used by multiple users in real time. “With our cloud approach, engineers don’t pull CAD files from a cloud-based server as exists in other methods,” said Hirschtick. “The other cloud CAD services are copybased, meaning that the software and files are on the cloud and the engineer copies them from the cloud to the desktop. “When you copy and install the software off the cloud server, hopefully it’s the same software. But what if it was upgraded?” continued Hirschtick. “With most CAD-inthe-cloud systems, multiple people can take a copy out of the cloud vault and move it to their local computer and work on it. But if I work on a copy of the same model at the same time as you, and I make a change and put it back, my changes can overwrite your changes, and your
Onshape offers software that exists fully in the cloud and can be used by multiple users in real time. In addition, this software can be used by authorized engineers working on any device with Internet access.
April 2016
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