Engineering Software Finally Starts Moving to the Cloud

At Onshape, Fridays are for show and tell. Engineers at the computer-aided design (CAD) startup gather in the break room at its offices in Cambridge, Mass., to show off improvements in their cloud software to a chorus of oohs and aahs. On a recent Friday, one of the features presented, Sheet Metal, allowed an engineer to show, side-by-side, how changes to a metal sheet would affect the shape of the finished product.

But Onshape’s biggest idea remains its core premise: CAD software that runs in the cloud, enabling engineers to collaborate in real time. The entrenched $8.7 billion CAD software business, which looks much the same as it did a decade ago, remains dominated by software that long predates Google Docs—it’s installed on individual PCs, with files that can’t be viewed or worked on by multiple users at the same time. Onshape Chief Executive Officer Jon Hirschtick says it’s past time for that to change. He has a taste for the dramatic. “I believe the work we’re doing can improve the way every manufactured product on earth is designed,” he says, because he expects competitors to follow his lead.