1A: Onshape Fundamentals - Section 1
Introduction and Setup
Welcome to Stage 1A! You'll be learning and practicing the basics of CAD throughout this stage.
This course is structured a bit differently from what you might be used to, and we hope you enjoy the process. In these exercises, you are encouraged to experiment and figure out how a feature "works." You can usually move on once you are able to complete the exercises. Exercises build on each other and always expect you to have done the previous exercises, so don't skip any.
No matter your experience level, you should start here. The time 1A takes to complete depends on your experience, because it relies on "figuring things out" to create connections and guide learning. It could take 30 minutes to an hour for an expert or multiple hours for complete beginners. The details you end up spending more time on are always going to be the stuff you need to learn or work on.
Warning
Make sure the required course tools (the part library and featurescripts) are added to your Onshape account before starting this stage.
RHS (Rectangular Hollow Section) Intro
We will start off with RHS Tubes (also known as Box Tube), since that can provide the primary structure of a robot. RHS is used in many places, from the drivetrain to the superstructure. It is strong, lightweight, and easy to work with. You will have to make RHS parts throughout your FRC career, so it's important to get comfortable with them. You will find that we use both "punched" and regular RHS, these examples will use punched for simplicity, but in your real robots you can CAD specific holes.

Example Usage


From the side, a RHS tube can be represented as a simple rectangle.
RHS is typically referred to by its size, eg: 50x25, 25x25, and 50x50 (Spoken as "fifty-by-twentyfive", "twentyfive-by-twentyfive", and "fifty-by-fifty"). For the rest of the learning course, we will use this notation when referring to RHS.
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25 mm × 25 mm
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50mm × 25 mm
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50mm x 50 mm

We'll be working with these increments throughout the stages, keep them in mind!
Important: Copy this Document!
Copy this document to use for all of the exercises in 1A. A tutorial is provided below to show how to copy a document.
Once the document is copied, move on to Exercise 0 using the page navigation buttons below.