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CAD & Design·Lesson 12 of 31

MKCad: The Onshape FRC Parts Library

Learn what MKCad is, who built it, what it contains, and how to add it to Onshape so you can drop real FRC parts into your designs natively.

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What MKCad is

MKCad is a large, free FRC COTS parts library built natively for Onshape. It is named for FRC Team 1836, The MilkenKnights (where the project originated), and was announced on Chief Delphi. It is now maintained by a group of community contributors and has become one of the most widely used resources in FRC CAD because it puts thousands of real parts a couple of clicks away.

What it contains

MKCad aims to include the COTS parts a team actually uses on a competition robot, drawn from vendors like VEXpro, WCP, AndyMark, and McMaster-Carr. Categories include:

  • Bearings
  • Electronics (both simplified and full-detail models)
  • Fasteners
  • COTS gearboxes
  • Gears, hubs, pulleys, and sprockets
  • Motors and sensors
  • Snap rings, shaft collars, and standard VEX spacers
  • VersaProducts and wheels

Because the parts are native to Onshape, each one already carries the correct name, color, and mass. That means when you build an assembly, your BOM is automatically populated with sensible part names and your weight estimate is meaningful.

How to access it

MKCad is available two ways:

  1. As an Onshape App / custom feature, which gives you a searchable in-app browser to insert parts directly into an assembly or Part Studio.
  2. As a public Onshape Document, from which you can copy parts into your own design.

A mentor or experienced student usually adds MKCad to the team account once, after which everyone can use it. The Onshape4FRC CAD Library page is a good index of MKCad and other libraries.

Why this changes your workflow

Without a library, inserting a gearbox means hunting for a STEP file, importing it, and cleaning it up. With MKCad, you search 'NEO' or 'VersaPlanetary' and insert the part in seconds with correct mass and naming. This dramatically speeds up assembly work and keeps your BOM clean.

Cautions and good habits

  • Check the part is current. Community libraries can lag behind a vendor's latest revision; verify critical dimensions before manufacturing a mating part.
  • Insert, don't reinvent. If a part exists in MKCad, use it rather than modeling your own.
  • Keep your design and the library separate. Treat library parts as fixed references; do your custom design in your own Part Studios.

MKCad plus vendor CAD means you spend your time designing the custom parts that make your robot unique, not re-drawing bolts and bearings.

Key takeaways

  • MKCad is a free, Onshape-native FRC COTS parts library named for FRC Team 1836 (The MilkenKnights) and maintained by community contributors
  • It covers VEXpro, WCP, AndyMark, and McMaster parts — bearings, fasteners, gearboxes, gears, motors, wheels, and more — with correct names, colors, and masses
  • It is available as an Onshape App/feature and as a public Document; a mentor adds it once for the whole team
  • Using a library keeps BOMs clean and weight estimates meaningful, but always verify currency of critical dimensions before manufacturing

Go deeper

Lesson quiz

Required

Answer all 3 questions correctly to complete this lesson.

1.What is MKCad?

2.Because MKCad is native to Onshape rather than imported geometry, what is already set up correctly when you insert its parts?

3.When you insert an MKCad part that has multiple variants (for example a wheel offered in several diameters), what happens?

Answer every question to submit.