Onshape Data and Documents: Who Owns Them and Their AI Value

Who owns Onshape documents and the designs in them?

The customer does. The Terms of Use say "The Customer maintains ownership of and responsibility for the following while using the Service", covering files, designs, models, scripts and output based on them (Onshape Terms of Use, effective 15 July 2020). The same terms set out no clause on training AI models with customer content. The one Onshape statement on AI that Origin found covers its assistant only: "All AI interactions are isolated and never used to train public models." (Onshape). That describes AI Advisor chats, not stored documents, so ask PTC in writing if a license depends on it.

Read this as general information rather than legal advice; counsel should check the quoted Onshape terms against your plan and contracts.

To see where an Onshape account might land, try the archive value tool or request a valuation.

Onshape free plan and public documents: why they rarely count

Public documents are a rights problem, not a storage setting. The terms say "All documents created by a Free Plan User, and all Content contained therein, is made public and therefore considered a Public Document." Once public, "other End Users (and in some cases, the general public) will be able to view, copy and transfer or save any such Content, inside or outside the Service." and "Any such Content, once published and/or posted, is non-confidential." For free-plan documents created on or after 7 August 2018, the owner "grants a worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license to any End User or third party accessing the Public Document to use the intellectual property contained in Customer’s Public Document without restriction" (Onshape Terms of Use).

Public Onshape models are also already in research use. The ABC dataset is "a collection of one million Computer-Aided Design (CAD) models" (arXiv); its authors write "We are grateful to Onshape for providing the CAD models and support." and include each model's "Original FeatureScript definition of the CAD model from Onshape. Represents the generation process of the CAD model." They also note "The copyright of the CAD models is owned by their creators." (ABC dataset).

What an Onshape document holds that AI buyers want

An Onshape document is a full history, not a file. "Onshape captures the state of every tab in a workspace every time an edit is completed". Versions "are immutable and capture the complete scope of a workspace at a particular point in time", "A branch is a named fork in the Version Manager graph of a document.", and "Onshape also captures and preserves release package candidates as versions in the Versions and History panel." (Onshape Help).

That is the record buyers describe. Mercor names Onshape among its tools and wants assemblies kept in native form, "with feature trees". Branches add something a file-based system rarely keeps: design alternatives that were tried and abandoned, alongside the one that shipped.

How to count your Onshape documents, versions and branches

Start from the Documents page, which "lists all of the Onshape projects, folders, publications, and documents you have permission to, including view permission." (Onshape Help). Filter to your company, then record for each product: documents, Part Studios and assemblies, versions, branches, released revisions and custom features. Mark public documents separately, because they will not count.

Check links between documents too. "Linking documents allows you to create references from one document to data in a version of another document." (Onshape Help). An assembly that references a supplier's or a client's document is only partly yours.

How to export Onshape data with its history

File exports carry geometry only. Onshape exports to "Native or standard formats (PARASOLID, ACIS, STEP, IGES, PVZ, JT, RHINO, GLTF, GLB, OBJ, 3MF, and STL)." and warns: "Note that the downloaded data will not contain features or parametric history." (Onshape Help).

The history leaves through the API. The Features documentation "describes the APIs Onshape provides for creating and manipulating features and the Feature List in a Part Studio." (Onshape API). A script can read the feature list of each Part Studio at each version, which gives a buyer the modelling steps as structured data next to a Parasolid file of the result. The other route is giving a buyer's team access inside Onshape under a signed license, which keeps everything in place but needs tight sharing controls.

Plan the export before any plan change. The terms say Onshape will use commercially reasonable efforts "to enable the export of Content in Parasolid (.x_t) and/or other industry standard file formats", but "Onshape does not guarantee that any Content will be available or useable by Customer following the termination of Customer’s subscription or otherwise." (Onshape Terms of Use). A company that is closing should read what to do with a CAD archive when a hardware company closes.

What to take out of an Onshape account first

A buyer will ask what you own outright. Answer that before any export.

• Client-owned documents and work done under design contracts; design consultancies face this most.
• Public documents, and private ones copied from public documents made by others.
• Linked documents owned by suppliers or partners, and App Store or third-party FeatureScript you licensed rather than wrote.
• Export-controlled designs; run each one through the ITAR/EAR screening steps before sharing any sample.
• Names in comments and edit history; see the de-identification guide.

What Onshape data is worth to AI buyers

One buyer program names Onshape and prints a figure: Mercor lists $45K to $1.3M for each hardware engineering company it licenses from, sized 20 to 2,000 employees, with the amount set by how many assemblies there are and how complete they are. Nobody has reported an Onshape account selling at that price; it is an advertised range and not an offer for your account.

Private, owned documents with long histories and many branches sit at the stronger end of any conversation; public documents do not count. For file-based systems, compare Fusion design archives; for boards, see PCB design data in Altium and KiCad. The general guide is licensing CAD and engineering data.

Does your company hold records like these? See what your data is worth.

Origin Data Partners works with companies that own data and helps get it bought. We are independent of the services on this page, and a buyer may pay us when a deal closes (how Origin is paid). See what your data is worth.