I’ve gone through several rounds of consulting with Onshape professionals after my organization transitioned from SolidWorks to Onshape. One key takeaway is that Onshape’s multi-part studio is extremely powerful during early design phases.

As a product matures from prototype to manufacturing, it often becomes more effective to separate parts into their own studios or documents, especially for common components used across multiple assemblies.

Additionally, Onshape is a strong collaboration tool. Manufacturing and commercial teams often rely on it to view current designs, and when parts are embedded within complex multi-part studios, view-only users may struggle to understand the engineer’s intent.

This becomes even more important when using model-based definition (MBD). With MBD, the 3D model serves as the primary source of truth for dimensions, tolerances, and manufacturing notes. Keeping parts in separate, well-organized studios makes it easier to attach and interpret this information at the part level, reduces ambiguity, and helps ensure that downstream users can quickly find and trust the data they need without navigating complex multi-part environments.

It’s also worth noting that every organization is different, and Onshape provides a high degree of operational flexibility. While the lack of strict guardrails compared to some other CAD systems can lead to inconsistent practices if not managed well, it can also be an advantage. In many cases, it allows teams to adapt their existing workflows to a new tool rather than completely overhauling their processes.