STEP files are the lingua franca for the CAD world. Virtually every solid modeling tool is capable of exporting STEP. Most can also import these files, but the experience can vary wildly in practice. Import may be possible but clunky. It may require the user to choose from many confusing options. Depending on how the file was exported, import may just fail.
With Ondsel Lens you can publish your 3D CAD designs privately or publicly and you can do it directly from the Ondsel Engineering Suite. Let’s learn how to do that.
We’ve just released a bugfix update for the latest stable version of Ondsel Engineering Suite. The changes mostly affect users of the Assembly workbench, VarSets, and the Ondsel Lens addon.
Back when we did the user survey, the generation of bills of materials (BOM) was the next important thing after the ability to create assemblies. People don’t even need collision detection as much as they need their BOMs. Based on this data, Pierre-Louis Boyer (Ondsel) recently added a Bill of Materials tool to the Assembly workbench for the upcoming Ondsel ES v2024.3 and FreeCAD v1.0. It is already available in weekly builds of Ondsel ES and the upstream project.
One of the conclusions in the user survey series is that the SheetMetal workbench is really important for users. 9,2% respondents rely on this addon to do their job, it’s also the third most popular choice for what to pay money for by professionals and the fourth most popular choice overall, after UI/UX, TNP, and Assembly WB.