Leaving SolidWorks Behind: AE Inc's $1.25M Win with Onshape

Leaving SolidWorks Behind: AE Inc’s $1.25M Win with Onshape

Rıdvan Polat

24 October 2025 10 mins to read

How We Went from “Never Switching” to a $1.25 Million Success—and the 6 Surprising Truths We Learned About CAD Change.

Introduction

The Hidden Friction of ‘Good Enough’ Software In any established business, there’s a kind of magnetic pull to the phrase “good enough.” It’s that invisible force keeping proven—but maybe a little clunky—processes firmly in place. For design and engineering firms, this usually shows up as loyalty to old-school, file-based CAD software. Sure, the workflow functions, but think of the cost: countless unseen hours burned on version conflicts, data translation headaches, and frustrating hardware limits.

Alternative Engineering (AE Inc.), a custom machinery company with 30 years of experience, was stuck right in the middle of this reality. Founder Rob Rodriguez literally started the company from his basement with a drafting board. He grew AE Inc. into a powerhouse that specialized in solving unique engineering problems no one else would touch, all while running on their rock-solid, established system, SOLIDWORKS.

But here’s the thing: when they finally decided to challenge that ‘good enough’ status quo, they unlocked a level of speed, collaboration, and growth that was completely unimaginable before. Their journey is proof—and it reveals some surprising truths—about what a new generation of tools like Onshape can truly make possible.

Figure 1: Modular Spiral Chute Design – Source: Onshape

Core Insight 1: Your Most Powerful CAD Workstation Might Be… Your Phone?

The real “whoa” moment for Rob Rodriguez wasn’t about some flashy new tool—it was about where he saw it running.

He was watching his Product Development Manager, John McClary, messing around with Onshape on a smartphone. Naturally, Rob thought, “Oh, it’s just a file viewer, a quick peek at the drawing.” You know, the usual mobile companion to the powerful desktop software.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

He describes his surprise perfectly:

“Right off the bat when he opened up Onshape on his phone, I go, ‘What?’ … I thought it was a viewer. I said, ‘Well, that’s an e-drawing.’ I go, ‘No, this is…’ I said John, ‘Don’t tease me like that.'”

That moment changes everything.

Suddenly, engineers aren’t chained to a specific high-end desk. They can grab critical design data anywhere. For the team at AE Inc., this flexibility means they can pull up live, editable models during a service call, right on the shop floor, or in a meeting using just a simple iPad or laptop. It completely untangles complex workflows and helps the whole company go “pretty much paperless.” The power of the design room is now truly in everyone’s pocket.

Core Insight 2: The Biggest Gains Aren’t Incremental; They’re Exponential

A 10x Reduction in Design Time Is Possible

When you think about improvement, you usually imagine trimming a few hours off a project. But what if you could cut the time by ten times?

That mind-blowing reduction in engineering hours was the biggest business impact for AE Inc.

Remember, this company builds one-offs—as Rob Rodriguez says, “Every order is the prototype.” In that environment, speed isn’t a bonus; it’s a lifeline. By switching to a cloud-native platform, they didn’t just shave a couple of hours; they reduced their design time by a factor of ten, hacking “hundreds of hours” off every single project.

Just to put that in perspective: a typical custom design package used to eat up 500-600 hours of engineering work. Now? They can knock it out in just a couple of weeks.

Rob’s surprise over the scale of the change is clear:

“…it would reduce the actual design time by tenfold. I mean, we cut design. ‘Hundreds of hours.’ ‘Was that hundreds?’ ‘Yeah. Hundreds. I mean, we can spend hundreds of hours.’… A typical design package might be five, six hundred hours. We’re now doing in a couple weeks.”

This monumental cut in overhead was the engine behind their impressive $1.25 million ROI. The savings didn’t just happen in the design phase, either. They streamlined the entire process: no more printing files, no more physically walking packets of documents to the tool room, steel ordering, or the shop floor.

This newfound, jaw-dropping velocity is what powered their incredible growth, which Rob sums up as: “exponential growth where we’ve doubled our sales three years in a row.” The lesson is simple: true transformation doesn’t look for incremental gains; it unlocks exponential velocity.

Core Insight 3: Getting Rid of File Friction

So, where were those “hundreds of hours” disappearing? It all came down to how the old, file-based software fundamentally worked. John McClary perfectly described the chaos of the pre-Onshape days. It wasn’t just slow; it created a broken system.

Workflow BEFORE Onshape (File-Based)	Workflow AFTER Onshape (Cloud-Native)
Brittle Models: Complex projects were hard to change. A minor tweak meant you “kind of got to start over” if the original design wasn’t perfect.	Robust Parametrics: Models update reliably using Variables and FeatureScript, allowing for quick, non-breaking modifications.
Slow Performance: Working with large assemblies meant the computer had to render each file linearly, making the system painfully slow.	Cloud-Based Speed: Performance is fast because the system leverages cloud computing; as John noted, “the more you work with the model the faster it feels.”
Linear Waiting: Teams had to split a job, forcing people to work on isolated sections and then “marry them all together at the end.”	Real-Time Teamwork: “Two people in the same part doing different edits at the same time and it’s just seamless.” No waiting.
Lockouts & Delays: If anyone (even the shop floor) opened a file, it would “lock out your files” for the designers, stopping work dead in its tracks.	Zero Lockouts: Every user has access to the single source of truth; no check-in/check-out or waiting for files to be unlocked.

The switch to Onshape “got rid of the biggest friction point, which was collaboration and files.” That’s because Onshape runs entirely in the cloud and includes built-in Product Data Management (PDM), meaning there are no local files to manage, sync, or lock—just one shared, always up-to-date workspace for everyone.

Core Insight 4: Guess Who’s Hardest to Convince? Usually the Boss.

While the engineers in the trenches are ripping their hair out over file lockouts, the view from the executive suite is totally different. They’re looking at years of investment: money spent on old software, extensive training, and established workflows. That creates massive inertia.

At AE Inc., the person who offered the firmest resistance wasn’t some stubborn veteran engineer—it was the founder and president, Rob Rodriguez, himself.

When the idea of switching CAD systems came up, Rob’s initial, gut reaction was a solid “no.” He sums it up perfectly:

“John, I said, ‘We’re not switching.’ No, no, no. Because it’s just like we went from this program to that program to this program. And I mean, we are all trained up in SOLIDWORKS… I’m like, ‘Oh my god, you can get one seat. That’s it. I need to see proof.'”

This is the critical lesson for any business transformation: Decision-makers can become disconnected from the brutal daily frustrations their teams face. They see the cost of change, but not the cost of staying the same.

Rodriguez, looking back, advises that for real change to happen, leaders absolutely have to “connect with the hardcore guys down in the trenches.” You need to truly understand the daily friction points before you can believe in the exponential potential of new technology. It’s a powerful reminder that successful transformation starts with leadership staying grounded in the reality of the work.

Core Insight 5: True Automation Creates a “Thumbprint” for Every Customer

One of AE Inc.’s key products is a spiral chute, a sort of custom slide used in the shipping and logistics industry. Traditionally, these are made from molds with fixed dimensions, forcing customers to design their facilities around a standard product. AE Inc. saw an opportunity to create a fully parametric version (meaning the entire design was driven by key variables like height, width, and pitch that could be updated instantly).

Figure 2: Parametric Spiral Chute Design for Customized Logistics Applications

Automated Spiral Chute Design Using Onshape FeatureScript

Using Onshape’s built-in programming language, FeatureScript, their product development manager (who has no formal programming background) built a system that automates the entire design process.

That makes our spiral shoots basically a thumb print. Every single shoot can be different now. We basically can type in the width, the height, the exit entry and make this spiral shoot any size for any package. And we’re the only company in the world that can do this.

A custom spiral chute that once took up to 400 hours to engineer can now be generated complete with manufacturing details in minutes.

Figure 3: Automated Spiral Chute Design Using Onshape FeatureScript

The Power of a Live Update

The real-time performance of this automation stole the spotlight during the live stream. As the team adjusted design parameters, the complex 2,300-part assembly instantly updated in the web browser. One audience member reacted in real time: “Holy smokes, that’s a live update!” This speed represents a true paradigm shift—engineers can now finalize the design and prepare it for manufacturing even before submitting the quote.

This automation allowed AE Inc. to slash delivery time for a completely custom product from 18-20 weeks down to a mere 4-5 weeks, creating an unparalleled competitive advantage.

Core Insight 6: The Most Expensive Tool Isn’t the Software; It’s the Hardware You Don’t Need

The $5,000 Workstation Is Obsolete

The old model of growth was expensive and slow. Every new engineer required a massive capital investment in a high-performance computer before they could even begin to be productive.

Rodriguez recalls the old financial burden clearly:

Remember we had to spend $5,000 a workstation. Crazy money. …every time we bought a seat of a new hire, we’d have to buy a lot of horsepower.

With a system that runs in a web browser, that entire cost center disappears. Complex, multi-thousand-part assemblies can be manipulated on a standard laptop or even an iPad. This lowers the financial barrier to entry and makes powerful design tools accessible across the organization, from the shop floor to purchasing. It also allows the company to scale its talent and capacity more efficiently.

Stop Settling for “Good Enough”

When you look at what Alternative Engineering (AE Inc.) did, it’s not just a nice success story—it’s a clear sign of where the entire manufacturing industry is heading. They didn’t just tweak their processes; they decided to totally rethink how an engineering business should run, collaborate, and scale. These modern, cloud-based tools aren’t a small upgrade; they’re the new minimum standard for how fast, collaborative, and custom you can be.

AE Inc. proved that if you stop settling for a “good enough” mindset, you can achieve massive, measurable improvements and drastically strengthen your market position. It turns out the toughest roadblocks in any industry aren’t always problems of engineering or technology, but simply problems of imagination.

AE Inc. turned a 400-hour design problem into a 2-minute automated process. That’s incredible. It makes you wonder: What long-held bottleneck in your industry is just sitting there, waiting for a fresh perspective and a new set of tools?

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Rıdvan Polat

Co-Founder at ChampionXperience

Ridvan Polat is a SOLIDWORKS Elite Application Engineer, Founder of ChampionXperience, and a recognized SOLIDWORKS, ENOVIA, and 3DEXPERIENCE Champion. He specializes in CATIA & ENOVIA technical support and 3DEXPERIENCE early engagement adaptation, helping organizations optimize PLM workflows.