The Onshape Arena Connection

Onshape is the only cloud native product development platform that combines mechanical computer-aided design (MCAD), built-in product data management (PDM), real-time cloud native collaboration tools, and business analytics.

Connection benefits:

• Frictionless collaboration in your product development process

• Connect Design Engineers with Operations or supply chain personnel

• Streamline development process

• Increase product quality

• Reduce development cost

• Reduce time to market

Using all connection features, the main workflow is:

1. Onshape and Arena Administrators set up account settings so that Onshape and Arena can communicate with each other.

2. Onshape and Arena Administrators configure mappings between Onshape categories/properties and Arena categories/attributes. Note: properties in Onshape are equivalent to attributes in Arena.

3. Parts and Assemblies are designed & engineered in Onshape.

4. A change is created In Arena.

5. A Release candidate is created in Onshape, with all parts, Assemblies, and drawings. In the Release candidate dialog, the Arena change is selected and associated with the Release candidate. The Release candidate is submitted.

6. Information is synced unidirectionally to Arena. In Arena, the Onshape Release candidate objects are displayed as Arena Items. Additional items can also be added to the BOM in Arena. Any associated files are requested by Arena and pulled from Onshape. These are PDF files for any included drawings, STEP files for made-to-spec parts, and GLTF thumbnails for parts and Assemblies.

7. In Arena, the Items can be checked for quality and compliance, and sent into the supply chain. Approval is managed by an Arena change and the Onshape Release is approved or rejected based upon the outcome of the Arena change review.

If the Arena change is rejected, a request must be made for the Onshape administrator to Reject the Onshape Release Candidate. See Forcing Onshape Release candidate approval.

An Onshape document is the top level in the Onshape workflow. A document contains any number of workspaces, and within workspaces, you can create, import and organize not just your CAD data, but also all supporting data and information that is pertinent to your CAD projects.

To be more specific, Onshape documents can contain parts, assemblies, drawings, imported data, images, and more. These types of data are stored in their own tabs within a document. For example, Part Studio tabs are where you do modeling like creating parts. Assembly tabs hold subassemblies and assemblies, Drawing tabs contain drawings, and so on. Onshape doesn't dictate what can and cannot be in a document. You can put many parts and assemblies in a document or just one part or just one modular subassembly if you wish. You can also use parts or assemblies from one document in another document.

There is no equivalent to a document in Arena.

A workspace in Onshape is an editable iteration of a document. There can be multiple workspaces for a document, and each workspace can consist of Part Studios, Assemblies, Drawings, and more.

An Onshape Workspace is equivalent to an Arena Working Revision.

A Workspace in Arena contains the Items and other data that your organization has created. An Arena Account Administrator provides proper access to the Workspace.

The following outlines the different entity types in Onshape:

• Parts - Parts are solid geometric bodies created from sketch regions (closed regions are indicated by shading).

• Standard content - Onshape standard content is content created by Onshape, kept in a database in Onshape, and maintained by Onshape. Users can insert Standard content in their Part Studios and Assemblies. There is never any risk of this content disappearing or not working from one release to another. This content is always available for use. For more information see Standard content.

• Items - Non-geometric entities you can add to your bill of material (see Bill of Materials for information) but that do not require being modeled (non-geometric entities). Some item examples are adhesives, grease, paint, and epoxy, For more information, see Items.

IMPORTANT! Do not confuse an Onshape Item with an Arena item. While these two entities share the same name, they are two different concepts.

• Part Studio - A container used to create and edit parts, surfaces, and sketches. The Part Studio lives in a tab within a document and generally consists of the Feature toolbar, the Feature list, and the graphics area containing the model. The Part Studio is not a model, rather it is a design environment meant for designing parts that need to share common references.

• Assembly - A container where you define a hierarchical structure of part and subassembly instances of an Assembly. It is also where you define degrees of freedom and relations. You are able to have more than one Assembly tab in a document. One Assembly can instance another Assembly as a subassembly, and/or instance a part directly. You are able to instantiate parts from the same document or other documents to which you have permissions (and that are versioned).

An Item in Arena is a part, process, or document produced by your company. By adding other Items to the bill of materials of an Item, you can make an Item an assembly. Items are managed in the Items world of Arena. Basic information about an Item, such as its Item number and revision, is found in the Specs view, and you can view different kinds of information about an Item by navigating through the different views in the Items world.

Items in Arena are revision-controlled information. That means that when you wish to modify the Item, you do so on its working revision, and then make those modifications effective.

Account Administrators can create categories to which you can assign an Item. Depending on how your workspace is configured, the category to which an Item is assigned may determine the default numbering scheme for an Item, the way its attributes are grouped and arranged on the Specs view, and the default custom bill of materials it uses.

IMPORTANT! Do not confuse an Onshape Item with an Arena item. While these two entities share the same name, they are two different concepts.

See the Arena help documentation for more information.

The Onshape BOM functionality allows you to automatically create a BOM from any workspace Assembly. You can insert parts and assemblies into an Assembly post-release, from an Onshape version, or assemble the parts and subassemblies and then release the Assembly all at once.

Onshape BOMs include a default set of properties as columns, and you can add or remove columns at will. Define Custom Properties and include those in the BOM as well, if you wish. You can also supply Display names for all Onshape-supplied properties through the Custom properties page of Company/Enterprise settings.

The Arena BOM is a list of Items (components and subassemblies) that make up an assembly. In Arena, you make an Item into an assembly simply by adding other Items to its BOM. In the Items world, the BOM view has multiple subviews, each representing a different view of the BOM. The most commonly used view is the Indented view, which shows a multi-level list of all components and subassemblies in an assembly's BOM, with each level indented farther from the left.

The BOM information (Parts, Assemblies) is the same; however, different additional information is displayed through different BOM views.

If there are effective revisions, the working revision of a BOM always shows the effective revision of all BOM Items that appear within it. Otherwise, the BOM shows the unreleased working revision (as shown in the screenshot below). If you want to explore the working revision of a BOM Item, click the Item Number of the BOM Item and then select the working revision from the Revision drop-down menu.

Categories in Onshape provide the ability to extend the properties of the standard Onshape object types to include more targeted and relevant metadata to be applied based on design, engineering, and manufacturing processes.

Categories work in conjunction with custom properties, to group those custom properties into reasonable and useful information. Once categories are defined, you can see the custom properties within your Properties dialogs for all Onshape objects to which the category is applied.

Categories should be defined in Arena first. They are then mapped to Onshape in Enterprise Settings > Arena.

An example

An Enterprise manufactures a product that is a combination of a part designed and produced in-house and parts ordered from a third party vendor. When working with off-the-shelf parts from a vendor, you may care about only a handful of properties like Vendor name, Vendor part number, and perhaps things like weight and cost.

However, when working with parts manufactured in-house, the list of properties will likely be entirely different. These properties may include information like Start date, Approved date, Manufacturing method, Length, and more.

This is where Onshape categories come into play. With categories, you can assemble the properties you really care about and need, so they are grouped together in all Properties dialogs within Onshape as a newly created category. Once the category is selected, the properties within the category are listed first in the dialog, making them easier to find and fill out.

See Categories for more information.

Arena Categories group similar objects within the workspace, and determine the attributes that appear on their Specs or Summary views. Categories can be configured to inherit attributes from the categories that appear above them in the Category tree (parent category).

Categories give you a way to classify Items, Requests, Changes, and Files in your workspace, creating subsets of these objects with which you can associate custom attributes. Categories for each object type are arranged in a hierarchical Category tree where attributes can be inherited down the tree. You can edit the Category tree for each object type in the categories view of the Account Administration tool.

In the Categories view, you can also configure default settings for categories, for example number formats or Custom BOMs for Item categories, and configure the layout of attributes on the Specs or Summary view for objects assigned to a particular category. You can also configure routings and routing methods for Changes based on their category and the values of attributes associated with those categories.

Categories also help you find what you are looking for more easily. Search for all objects that are assigned to a certain category. You can also configure your workspace settings to display first-level categories, to allow searches that start from a category of object instead of returning results that include all objects of that object type.

See the Arena help documentation for more information.

Custom properties are the metadata definitions that drive the data displayed in the Properties dialogs and BOMs for Onshape entities (part, Part Studio, Assembly, BOM, Drawing, etc.). Enterprise Administrators and Owners are able to create new custom properties for use in enterprise-owned documents, activate or deactivate them to determine their use by users, mark them as required, provide default values, and provide Display names for existing Onshape properties. Enterprise users are able to view these metadata definitions and input metadata information for the entity.

• Properties are analogous to Attributes in Arena.

• Custom properties groups both default and custom properties together in the Custom properties list.

• Custom properties apply only to documents that are owned by the enterprise.

Arena attributes marked as required do not need a default value assigned; however, Onshape properties marked as required must have a default value assigned. See Creating and activating custom properties.

See Custom Properties for more information.

Attributes are the fields that appear on the Specs and Summary views of Items, Requests, Changes, Suppliers, and Supplier Items. There are two types of attributes in Arena: Core attributes, which are provided by Arena, and Custom Attributes, which you define for your workspace.

Arena Attributes (the Item's metadata) is analogous to Onshape Properties.

An attribute is either global (applied to all categories) or category-specific (applied only to specific categories selected by Account Administrators).

Arena attributes marked as required do not need a default value assigned; however, Onshape properties marked as required must have a default value assigned. See Creating and activating custom properties.

Arena Core Attributes

Core attributes can be one of several field types:

• Single- or Multi-Line Text Fields for free-text entries

• Drop-down Menus allow users to build a list of values.

• Predefined Drop-Down Menus are a fixed list of values from which users can select

• Numbers are a numeric value, including decimal places.

Attributes have rules which define their behavior.

• Revision Control indicates whether modifying an attribute triggers the working modifications flag on an Item. Cost attributes are not revision controlled, but all other attribute types are.

• The Association Rule governs whether a custom attribute is global or category-specific. Global attributes appear on every object of the relevant object type, while category-specific attributes appear only on the categories you specify. Core attributes and cost attributes are always global.

• The Requirement Rule governs whether or not a custom attribute is required on an object when the object is created or edited.

• The Visibility Rule governs whether or not the attribute is shown when empty. Core attributes are always visible, even when empty.

Following is a list of core Arena attributes:

• Item number - Unique number associated to the item. Analogous to the Part number in Onshape.

• Any - In both Basic and Advanced searches, you can choose to search multiple attributes at once with the Any search.

• Item name - Descriptive name given to the Item

• Revision - A snapshot of an Item at a certain moment in its development. The Item's revision designation.

• Category - Categories group similar objects within the workspace, and determine the attributes that appear on their Specs or Summary views. Categories can be configured to inherit attributes from the categories that appear above them in the Category tree (parent category).

• Owner - The user designated as the Item's owner.

• Creator - The user designated as the Item's originating author.

• Description - Detailed explanation of the Item.

• Supplier name - Name of the Item's designated supplier.

• Supplier item number - Item number as designated by the supplier.

• Supplier item name - Name of the Item as designated by the supplier.

• Lifecycle phase - Items, Requests, and Changes have a lifecycle defined by stages and phases that mark an object's current status. Account Administrators can customize the Item lifecycle by adding their own phases.

• Modified view - When a user makes a modification to revision-controlled information (Specs, Bill of Materials, Sourcing, Costing, or Files views), the working revision of the Item is marked as Modified, and the Item is flagged with the Working Modifications icon in search results in the Items world.

• Applied requirement name - A short name by which the compliance requirement is quickly recognized in tables and lists.

Arena Custom Attributes

Custom attributes allow you to define information about your Items, BOM lines, Requests, Changes, Suppliers, Supplier Items, Quality Processes, and Tickets that is specific to your company. You can specify the most suitable field type for a custom attribute and its values. In addition to Single- and Multi-Line Text Fields and Drop-Down and Predefined Drop-Down Menus, custom attributes can be the following field types:

• Date to specify a date value

• Number to specify a numeric value, including decimal places

• Cost (Items only) to specify a cost value, including currency and decimal places

There is one custom attribute that must be created initially in Arena by Arena support. This is set up in Workspace Settings > Attributes:

• OnshapeCreated - List values: Yes and No. Determines whether the Item was generated (and is to be editable when synced) by Onshape. If the item is generated (and synced) via Onshape, then any subsequent changes and syncing will overwrite the Item in Arena. Should the Item be updated in Arena, on the next Onshape sync, this update is overwritten. Any items designated No are considered generated (created) by Arena and are not editable from Onshape.

Onshape Versions

A version in Onshape is a snapshot of a workspace at a particular time. A version is created using the Create version command and appears in the Version Manager. Versions are immutable and can never be changed (they are view only). Versions may have properties (metadata) assigned to them. You can create a new branch (and thereby a workspace) from a version. You can also compare history entries in workspaces and versions, and any combination of the two.

All documents start with a version named Start and a workspace named Main.

Onshape Versions are analogous to Arena Revision Control (see below).

Onshape Branches

A branch in Onshape is a named fork in the Version and history graph of a document. Branches fork at a version, end with a workspace, and can have zero to N sequentially stored versions on the branch.

There is no equivalent to a branch in Arena.

Arena's Revision Control allows you to mark steps in an Item's development, from Unreleased to In Production to Obsolete. By creating different revisions of an Item as it travels through different phases of its lifecycle, you create read-only snapshots of all views of the Item at the moment a revision was released.

An Item can exist in a working revision, an effective revision, a pending revision, and any number of superseded revisions. Revision types are:

• Working revision - The editable revision of data, where users make changes. There is only one working revision at a time.

• Pending revision - A locked-down revision that is scheduled to become the effective revision at a future date (as specified in an approved Change).

• Effective revision - The most recently locked-down revision.

• Superseded revisions - Past effective revisions that were replaced when a new revision was made effective.

See the Arena help documentation for more information.

Onshape Release management is a set of automated workflows in Onshape used to manage releasing versions of parts, assemblies, drawings and imported files (translated or not) in a document. This functionality is available only for the Onshape Professional and Enterprise subscriptions and allows you to establish workflows and tools for your entire company.

Arena does not have an equivalent Release management process.

See Release management for more information.

Changes record the formal approval process for modifications to revision-controlled Item information. Reviewers included in the decision board for a Change participate in a staged voting process, casting votes to either reject or approve the Change. Any vote for rejection rejects a Change.

Account Administrators configure Changes in the Changes view of the Account Administration tool, where they determine whether Change Management should be used for Items in the Design stage and the Production stage. For stages that use Change Management, Account Administrators select a Routing Method:

• In User-Defined Manual Routing, the creator of a Change selects the routings to which the Change will be submitted for approval.

• In Admin-Defined Manual Routing, the creator of a Change submits the Change to a Change Administrator, who selects routings for the Change before submitting it for approval.

• In Auto Routing, the creator of a Change submits the Change to preselected routings determined by the type of information affected by the Change.

• In Change Attributes Routing (available when routings are set according to Change category), routings are determined by values selected for custom attributes on the Change during Change creation.

Reviewers are notified (either in the Notifications tab of their Dashboard, or both in the Notifications tab and via email, depending on their preferences) when the stage at which they can enter a vote opens. You can also send reminders to reviewers asking them to review a Change.

After a Change is approved, you can track its progress toward incorporation into the workspace in the Implementation view, including an Implementation Status, Implementation Notes, and Implementation Files.

Changes can be configured with category-specific custom attributes whose layout can be customized to control their order and grouping on the Summary view of a Change of that category. Account Administrators can configure Change categories to include default numbering, routings, effectivity, and initial Implementation Status, and can force specific values for Numbering and Effectivity per Change category.