Technical/Tools: On shapes

Onshape is a CAD program which is entirely online, and my favorite. Meaning you can use it from any computer anywhere. As I regularly change from using my home desktop, to laptop, to other desktops, it is super useful to not need to re-install it, or move the file via USB every time.
I've used it to make a variety of things, mostly for high-school work, but some personally.

It works by having you create "sketches" on one plane, then extruding and manipulating solid objects from that "sketch." This is much more intuitive to me than something like SketchUp, where you use 2d faces rather than solid objects, or Blender, where you don't work with measurements.

It is also a procedural system, so you can alter anything that you have done to the model before, and it will attempt to reconcile that with all the following modifications. By attempt I mean, most of the time it gets it right, but occasionally you need to go back into a few steps and fix them. This is super useful for when you realize, halfway through making something, it would actually be better if it was half a cm shorter, or that you need to alter the shape fundamentally.

A useful tool for finishing off a project and showing it off, you can build movement relations/restrictions in to objects and joints.

Finally it has the ability for you to work collaboratively. As it is all online, you can share it with other people and have them work with you (Even at the exact same time as you are), from anywhere. This is incredibly useful when working with multiple people, as you don't have to send the files to each other.

As for things that I've done on it. I made a few building designs for school:


A cafe. The doors where able to fold closed.


The cafe in location.


Boarding room for a school.


An apartment building with a wall which moved between living-room and bedroom by sliding across.

I also made a few things personally, one was my front lawn and part of my house to show what putting a shed in it would look like:

And another which was a model of a staff from a series (RWBY) which I was originally intending on building, but never got around to:

It does have a few downsides. It's not that easy to render things in it, it has an okay rendering plugin, but for anything else you have to export it, then import it into another program. Also its tutorials aren't the greatest, so mostly you have to learn by doing.
It's also much better at creating things that are functional and have specified size than things that look pretty, although you can coax some interesting shapes out of things as well (Especially if you prefer geometric styles).

All of these features and the simple-ish user interface make it my favorite CAD/modeling program I have used yet.

References:
1. Onshape | Product Development Platform. (n.d.). Retrieved 6 April 2020, from https://www.onshape.com/