Hey everyone (this is Max, just FYI) — before you get started on the CAD lessons, I wanted to share some quick info…

  1. This should only take about 30 minutes to 1 hour. It’s not meant to be long or annoying winter break homework, but instead an important opportunity to improve your skills and significantly strengthen our robotics team for the rest of the season and for years to come.
  2. The only thing that cabinet is watching for, is that everyone submits a final project. To learn the CAD skills you will need, I’ve laid out several YouTube videos for you to watch. If you’ve never used Onshape before, I highly recommend watching them, and, most importantly, following along with the videos, as they’ll make the process much easier. If you chose not to, or to watch your own videos, thats fine, but if you are new to onshape, I recommended following the videos below.
  3. If you run into problems or start getting really frustrated while CADing, please DM me! This isn’t meant to make you suffer — it’s about helping you get better at CAD and preparing you to better support your team.

You CAN DO THIS!!

How to create an Onshape student account!

Note: I created my account a long time ago, so I had to create these instructions based on my own experimentation with their website and YouTube videos. I apologize if they are slightly inaccurate.

  1. Go to this website, its recommended to use a chrome based browser, but Safari will work just fine! https://www.onshape.com/en/education/sign-up
  2. Enter your information. It should ask for your first name, last name, and email address (I believe you must use your student email).
  3. After that, you should receive an email. In the email, click the “Activate Your Account” button, which will take you back to your web browser.
  4. Next, enter a password (make sure you write this down lol), check the boxes for the terms of service, etc., and then click the Continue button. (If it asks for a company, you can just put “N/A.”)
  5. And that’s it! If it asks you to customize any user preferences, you can leave everything set to the default.

Extremely Highly Recommended Videos to Watch and FOLLOW ALONG TO!

Start with these (Total Time ≈ 40 Minutes)… Which teaches the basics of making a 3D model in OnShape.

For reference, the following four videos are from a 7-part series; however, the first four are all you really need to know. The videos will tell you to work in inches, which you are welcome todo for this video series. However, when you actually CAD for the robot, or create your final project for this winter break class, I WILL CRASH OUT IF YOU DO NOT USE mm AS YOUR UNITS!!! 😭 (I will tell Mr. Shea, our physics teacher, and I will make him hate you too lol).

Also, moving around in the 3D environment (Rotating and panning the camera) can feel very frustrating at first. I highly recommend you use a mouse; it will help a ton! Ironically, these more nitty-gritty, navigation aspects are covered more in video number four, in case you want to watch that a little sooner 🙂.