FRC Onshape Tutorial: How to CAD Your First Robot Part

Every robot starts as a drawing before it becomes metal. In FRC, that drawing lives in CAD, and the most popular CAD tool on teams today is Onshape — a full professional 3D modeler that runs entirely in your browser, with nothing to install. If you can open a Chrome tab, you can CAD. This guide walks you from a blank account to your first real part: a length of 2x1 aluminum tube, the same stock that frames thousands of FRC robots. Let's get you modeling.

Why Onshape for FRC

Onshape is browser-based, so it works the same on a school Chromebook, a Mac, or a Windows laptop, and your documents auto-save to the cloud. That cloud model also means real-time collaboration: multiple students can edit the same document at once, like a Google Doc for CAD. Best of all, it is free for students and teams through the Onshape Education plans.

If you also want to brush up on the build side that CAD feeds into, our mechanical build track and CAD design track pair well with this tutorial.

Step 1: Sign up free with an Education plan

Onshape offers a free Student plan for individuals and a free Educator plan for teams, mentors, and coaches. Both are real, full-featured Onshape — not a stripped-down demo. (Education plans are for non-commercial use.)

• Individual students: Go to the Onshape for Education sign-up page and create an EDU account. Indicate you are a student in grade school, fill in your school details, and — per FRCDesign.org's setup guide — you can simply enter "Robotics" as your reason for using Onshape. Onshape verifies your info, emails you, and you set a password.
• Whole teams: A mentor or design lead can request the Educator plan for FIRST teams, which adds a shared classroom with Classes and Assignments so you can manage everyone's work in one place, plus parts libraries and FRC field models.

After your first login, set your default units (most FRC teams work in inches) and pick mouse controls. Then you're ready to make a document.

Step 2: Understand the Onshape document model

Everything in Onshape lives inside a document. A single document can hold many tabs, and the two tab types you'll use constantly are:

According to Onshape's documentation, you "use Sketch tools to create 2D geometry, and use Feature tools to create 3D models (or parts) from those sketches, all within a Part Studio." That sketch-then-feature loop is the heart of CAD, so let's do it.

Step 3: Sketch on a plane

Create a new document, and Onshape drops you into a Part Studio with three reference planes — Top, Front, and Right — plus an Origin point where they all meet. Every Part Studio has these by default, and they are your starting reference for any sketch.

To begin, click the Sketch tool and pick a plane to draw on (the Top plane is a common choice for a flat part). Onshape rotates to look straight at that plane. Now draw your shape — for a length of 2x1 tube, use the Rectangle tool to draw a rough rectangle near the origin.

Dimension and constrain it

A rough sketch isn't done until it's fully defined — meaning Onshape knows the exact size and position of every line. You lock that down two ways:

• Dimensions set exact sizes. Use the Dimension tool, click a line, and type a value — for our tube cross-section, 2 in for one side and 1 in for the other.
• Constraints set relationships, like making two lines equal, parallel, or coincident (touching). Snapping a corner of the rectangle onto the origin is a clean way to anchor it.

When the sketch turns from blue to black, it's fully defined. Getting in the habit of fully defining sketches now will save you from parts that mysteriously shift later. Close the sketch when you're happy.

Step 4: Extrude into a 3D part

A flat rectangle isn't a tube yet — you need depth. That's the Extrude feature. Onshape defines Extrude as a tool to "add depth to a selected region or planar face along a straight path." In plain terms: it pushes your 2D shape out into 3D.

Select your rectangle and run Extrude. The key options:

Set the result to New, choose Blind, and enter a length — say 24 in for a two-foot piece of tube. Click the green check, and you have a solid 2x1 bar. To make it a real hollow tube, start a new sketch on one end face, draw a smaller rectangle inset from the edges (real 2x1 stock is often 0.0625\" or 0.125\" wall thickness), and Extrude it with Remove through the length to hollow it out. Congratulations — that's a recognizable FRC tube.

Real teams buy this stock pre-made: vendors like WCP, AndyMark, and REV sell 2x1 and 1x1 6061-T6 aluminum box tube, frequently pre-punched with a hole pattern (a common one is #10 clearance holes on 0.5\" spacing). You can model those holes the same way — sketch circles, then Extrude with Remove.

Step 5: Skip the busywork with the FRC parts library

You should learn to model your own structural parts, but you should not hand-model a NEO motor or a gearbox. The FRC community maintains FRCDesignLib, a library of off-the-shelf (COTS) FRC components and assemblies, and the easiest way to use it is the FRCDesignApp.

Per the FRCDesignLib resource page, the two are distinct: "FRCDesignApp is the plugin/app that helps you insert components into your documents, while FRCDesignLib is the actual collection of components." To set it up, find FRCDesignApp in the Onshape App Store, choose Subscribe, then Get for Free. It links to your account automatically — just reload any already-open documents once so the inserter appears. From there you can search COTS parts and filter by vendor (REV, WCP, and more) and drop them straight into your design.

Step 6: Assemble with mates

Once you have a few parts, open an Assembly tab to put them together. Parts are positioned and connected with mates, and mates snap to mate connectors — which Onshape describes as "local coordinate systems located on or between entities." Think of a mate connector as a precise grab point.

The two mates beginners use most:

• Fastened mate — locks two parts together completely. Onshape's docs note it restricts all six degrees of freedom, so the parts can't move relative to each other at all. Use this to bolt a gusset onto your tube.
• Revolute mate — allows rotation around one axis, perfect for a wheel on an axle, an arm pivot, or a shaft in a bearing.

Other mate types — Slider, Cylindrical, Planar, Ball — cover more motion later, but Fastened and Revolute will carry you a long way.

Where to go next

You now know the full loop: sketch, dimension, extrude, library parts, assemble. The single best place to go deep is FRCDesign.org's free learning course, built specifically to take FRC students "from zero to being able to model a full robot." It's sponsored by West Coast Products and Fabworks, weaves in Onshape's own learning courses, and even walks you through modeling a swerve drivebase using a top-down design workflow.

One important note on accuracy: robot weight and size limits change every season, and so do many legal-material rules. Don't trust a number you read in a tutorial — always confirm dimensions, weight, and bumper rules in the current FIRST game manual before you finalize a design.

Ready to keep building your CAD skills? Dive into our CAD design track and start turning ideas into robots.