Already used at over 800 colleges and universities, Onshape's no-cost educational plan delivers professional full-cloud 3D CAD to instructors and students

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 7, 2016 — (PRNewswire) —

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 7, 2016 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- Over the past year, thousands of college students and educators around the world have embraced the benefits of cloud-based CAD through Onshape's Free Plan. Responding to their unique academic needs, Onshape is introducing a separate, zero-cost Education Plan that removes the storage and Private Document limits of Onshape's Free Plan.

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Onshape's Education Plan now offers the same full CAD functionality and unlimited storage as its paid Professional Plan. It is available to all current students and faculty members at any accredited educational institution.

The classroom advantages of full-cloud CAD go far beyond the costs of software. Because it runs in a web browser, Onshape requires zero IT - no downloads, installs, upgrades or IT support. Setup for an entire class takes minutes instead of days or weeks.

"No longer do educators and students have to waste valuable and expensive classroom time configuring their CAD systems," says Dave Corcoran, Onshape VP of Research & Development. "Instead of worrying about licenses, upgrades and maintenance, students can focus on why they came to college in the first place – to build up their engineering and design skills and learn from their instructor's experience and expertise."

Reasons for colleges, universities and high schools to adopt Onshape in the classroom include:

• Zero cost and zero IT. The entire class or team can be up and running in minutes.

  Students can work from any location, from any computer or mobile device, at any time. Instructors and TAs can also check assignments and provide feedback from anywhere, from any device, at any time.Students can work on the Macs, Chromebooks, and iPads that are especially popular in education, as well as work on Windows PCs. Traditional CAD only works on PCs and often requires top-of-the-line hardware powerful enough to run compute-intensive and graphic-heavy software.

• Full-cloud CAD is built for teams and group projects. Multiple students can simultaneously work on the same designs, unlike with desktop-installed CAD, which requires serial work (only one person at a time can have edit rights for each CAD file).

  Teachers assigning work and students submitting work in the cloud is as easy as clicking "Share."Onshape tracks every change. Students can recover any prior state and don't have to worry about lost work due to crashes. Educators and TAs can diagnose exactly where students went wrong, instead of dealing with corrupted or non-recoverable files.

• No licensing hassles. Schools don't have to acquire and distribute the software – each student and teacher signs up on his/her own.

  Students at more than 800 colleges and universities are now using Onshape.Thomas Kwan, a National Science Foundation fellow at Yale University, reports saving significant time with Onshape in his "Green Engineering and Sustainable Design" class.

"With traditional CAD, our students first had to wait for a large download, and then a lengthy install and licensing process just to get them to the first screen," he says. "With Onshape, which runs in a web browser, they're up and running in minutes."

Onshape is easy to teach and learn. With workflows similar to other professional 3D CAD systems, knowledge and skills learned in Onshape are easily transferrable in the workplace – regardless of an employer's preferred CAD system.

Technical instructor Andy MacInnis, who teaches the Materials and Methods Workshop for the MIT Integrated Design & Management Program, says his students have experienced a quick learning curve with Onshape.

"It's very intuitive. Compared to some other CAD systems, it was easier by far for students to find solutions just by using Onshape's online tutorials and the help button," he says.

"I love the collaboration feature. It's great for having multiple people look at the same model while it's being manipulated. You can show a group of students how to do something without them straining their eyes to see the cursor on a projection board 30 feet away. Everyone can follow along on their own screens," he adds. "We're only just discovering what Onshape can do for us."

To get started, sign up for the Onshape Education Plan at Onshape.com/edu. Additional details are in the Education Plan FAQs.

About Onshape

Onshape is the only company in the world 100% focused on cloud and mobile CAD, offering the  first and only professional 3D CAD system that lets everyone on a design team work together using any web browser, phone, or tablet. Breaking away from the traditional model of desktop-installed CAD, Onshape has data management and collaboration built in at its core.

For the first time, the CAD system and CAD data live in one place in the cloud, and are never copied anywhere. Everyone on a design team sees and works on the same master CAD data at all times, avoiding confusing checkouts, file copies, and overwriting each other's work.

Full-cloud Onshape also eliminates the hassles of installations, license codes and servers, service packs, and add-on PDM systems. Every Onshape user always works with the same version of Onshape – the latest version.

Companies worldwide rely on Onshape today to speed up the design of consumer electronics, mechanical machinery, medical devices, machine parts, industrial equipment, and many other products. Onshape's Free Plan also makes it the ideal CAD choice for students and educators to collaborate inside and outside the classroom.

Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Onshape includes key members of the original SolidWorks team plus elite engineers from the cloud, data security and mobile industries. For more information, visit Onshape.com/press-room

Onshape Press Kit: Download here.

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SOURCE Onshape