I think Michael @teaching tech used to use onshape in that way when he was working on the schools F1 projects.
I actually mentor (if that’s the right word) my grandson’s projects by link sharing, he lives a couple of hours away - I am not sure if collab will work for us with our free licenses, but there’s nothing wrong with the way we are working either.
What a world we live in!!
Careful, if he answers in his own time that is fine. Spamming is not okay here. If you have sent a message or two that is plenty. This thread has nothing to do with that.
If they are learning collaborative CAD, that is just absolutely amazing. I am not sure any other software makes that as easy. For example with solidworks that is a whole can of worms, my last job we had a dedicated server, for just 8-9 workstations and remotely accessing it was not permitted.
My son’s First Robotics Challenge team applied through Autodesk and had a Fusion 360 license. So that is/was an option.
I will say that my son ended up doing a lot of the design work at home, because it wasn’t collaborative. OnShape sounds amazing so many of the team members can contribute.
My daughter’s team also uses Onshape.
I use Rhinoceros (an old version V6 in my case), not a parametric CAD program, but more organic. I use it for developing 3D print (stl format) and milling files (dfx drawing). Does anyone here know Rhino?
I’ve seen the price tag, that was enough for me. 
I’ve seen 1 or 2 forum members say they use it. I tried it out back in the day but we chose not to use it because the surface quality was too poor for mold making. I believe it’s improved since then.
I have been trying to learn alot of them. The only one I want to learn is FreeCad.
All the other ones with the free license are so restrictive. And there is alot out there for learning it too!
Rhinoceros (or rhino3D) is not freeware, not parametric and it is develloped for organic design
I spent several months struggling to learn FreeCAD. Then I caved and got the free version of Fusion 360.
IMO F360 is a much easier to use, much more finished product. FreeCAD was a constant struggle. I don’t “regret” the time spent learning FC, as many of the concepts are transferable, but I sure wish that I had started with F360. So far the limitations of the free version haven’t been much of an issue.
I also went from FreeCAD to Fusion360.
The license restrictions on Fusion are still a pain, and the annual renewal process is annoying AF.
For me though jt was a realization that FreeCAD isn’t a finished product. So much of it is still under development, and needs to be because stuff is still seriously broken.
As a general tool, it is very good, and it does most things quite well, but the finishing touches are still lacking. I found adding fillets and chamfers to parts most frustrating, as it would often just not know how to do some of them. I think the current version is better, but I haven’t used it for a while. If I were mkre confident that I were doing things correctly, it would be different, but as is, I never know if things are janky because I effed up, or FreeCAD can’t do that, or some from column A…
At the risk of sounding like an evangalist, I am so glad @jeffeb3 found Onshape for me way back then!
I just found it so much more intuitive and help when it was necessary seemed to be so much easier to get, a bit like this forum, with people intent on helping rather than demonstrating how much they know.
Yes, I have to make all my files public, but that’s the only catch so far, and it really does seem to get a lot of attention from the developers.
I don’t get the sense that it’s the “free loaders” doing the development work, quite the contrary - paying customers seem to rightfully get lots of attention.
While I haven’t worried about the public domain thing, since most of my stuff ends up being freely available anyway, I have contemplated a “job number” for each part, separately indexed to make searching more difficult. I suspect that’s not quite in the spirit of “using all that IP for free” and I certainly never intend to charge for any of my models.
I would really like to love freecad. I just enjoy using onshape though.
A sales person called me one time. They assured me they would never nerf the free hobby license. But they could do it any minute and there’s nothing we can do about it. That’s frustrating to me. But it does work for now.
I mostly use Fusion 360 and OpenScad, depending on the model. I’ve debated trying something else in place of Fusion 360, more for license reasons than anything else. I was going to try Freecad again but I think I’ll just stay with Fusion 360. If I needed to move to a paid version, it’s $545 per year which isn’t terrible considering. This is why I haven’t put more effort into trying Onshape since if you needed to move to a paid plan, it’s $1500 per year.
Yes but the entire online thing for 360, even on a great computer is slow. Freecad is not.
^^^. This!
I have to agree. I lean to Freecad because I want it all on my computer. CenturyLink DSL is way to slow for most of the cloud programs. It took some time and lots of YouTube videos , but I enjoy using Freecad. using the spreadsheet let’s me quickly modify as needed.
I do like Fusion 360 ,but trying to renew the free version is exasperating, cloud storage is iffy. Yes,internet speed and reliability is my biggest problem.
This applies to most every form of cloud storage (IMO). Especially the fine print on MANY sites that says that they “own” anything that you place there.
Multi-TB size hard drives are relatively cheap, so all of my F360 projects (and indeed all my data) gets stored locally, with moderately frequent backups to a removable drive.
The flip side of that, is that I’m spoiled now to the cloud storage of Fusion.
I use other programs like Blender, and I do work from lots of different locations, and Fusion is the only one that I have easy access to my files from any computer I’m on.
Every time I tell myself I’m going to use something different, the convenience of my files being available brings me back to Fusion….
I got stuck on Inventor. 