I meet a lot of Series-A and Series-B CMOs who treat CAD files like sacred engineering relics. They live on a secure server. Only the mechanical team touches them. Marketing looks in from a distance and waits for the first physical prototype before it lifts a finger.

That mindset burns time and capital you do not have.

Your Onshape assembly is already a fully-formed digital product. In the right hands it can reduce customer-acquisition cost, speed up sales cycles, and make you look like a billion-dollar brand while you still run your stand-ups from a co-working space. All the raw material is sitting in the cloud. You just have to turn the key.

1. Generate Photorealistic Renders for Product Pages and Pitch Decks

The moment a prospect lands on your product page, they look for a picture. They are not hunting for features or certifications - not yet. Visual proof comes first. Research from the Baymard Institute found that 56% of users click straight to the images the second the page loads.

A polished render side-steps all the usual hardware delays: tooling, DFM tweaks, supply-chain hiccups, the photographer’s busy calendar. It tells investors and customers, “We know exactly what we’re building, and we know how to present it.”

We ran one polished hero render during pre-launch and it generated deposits for the industrial printer a full six months before the first unit was built. Prospects told the sales team, "If the real thing looks this good, we're in."

The Play, Step by Step

1. Open the assembly in Onshape’s Render Studio. If you only pay for the Standard plan, grab the free Educator add-on or export a high-resolution PNG and finish the look in Photoshop.

2. Assign believable materials. Call a spade a spade - “brushed 6061 aluminum” beats the generic “metallic” tag because the brain recognises realistic surface cues.

3. Drop an HDRI soft-box environment into the scene. It delivers natural reflections without forcing you to learn three-point lighting.

4. Set the camera. A three-quarter, eye-level shot with a 35 mm lens feels familiar to the human eye. Hit Render and let Onshape’s cloud GPUs grind while you refill your mug.

If you need the asset in the next hour, print a raw PNG straight from Onshape, increase canvas size to 4000 px in Canva, add a slight depth-of-field blur, and roll it out. It is not Pixar, but it is more than good enough to anchor a Series-B pitch deck.

Why It Works on Human Psychology

People trust what looks finished. A recent Wyzowl survey showed that 85% of respondents said high-production visuals increase brand credibility. They do not care that it came from a GPU farm instead of a studio set. Clean lighting and realistic materials trigger the same confidence switch.

Metrics You Can Share in the Next Board Update

At Fello, we see click-through rates climb 18 to 25% when teams swap in a well-lit render for a stock photo. Salespeople report fewer back-and-forth clarification emails, and boards stop asking, “Do we have anything we can show on slide one?” That is real calendar time you win back.

2. Craft Exploded Views That Explain Complex Tech in Two Seconds Flat

Your buyer might be a former consultant, a finance lead, or the head of operations. They did not study mechanical engineering, but they still hold the pen on a six-figure purchase order. A dense spec sheet will not convert them. An exploded view can.

Turn your CAD assembly into a concise visual explainer: isolate the major parts, label the key elements, and export a high-resolution image. That one asset becomes a one-slide explainer that shortens demos and accelerates handoffs.

How to Build and Deploy the View

Open your assembly, choose Explode View, and move only the major sub-assemblies. Five to seven selections are plenty. Name the state “Marketing Explode” so engineers keep their hundred-step BOM explode separate.

Export the scene in two ways. First, grab a crisp SVG for print collateral; vectors scale cleanly on trade-show banners. Second, run the same scene through Render Studio to create a short MP4 that flies the parts apart, lingers, and then re-assembles. Cap the animation at fifteen seconds. That length matches the default auto-play window on LinkedIn and keeps email attachments under control.

Performance Numbers

Insert the exploded animation in the first two minutes of a product webinar and watch average retention jump. In email outreach, reps who embed a GIF of the view see higher reply rates because the prospect finally grasps why the bill of materials costs what it costs.

3. Post Short 3-D Loops That Stop the LinkedIn Scroller Cold

LinkedIn is a nonstop stream of thought-leadership platitudes and text-only updates. Anything that moves gets noticed. A five-second loop of your device spinning on a white field induces that half-second pause the algorithm uses to rank content. More dwell time equals more reach.

A logistics client turned a simple CAD spin into 74,000 organic impressions in 48 hours - no ad spend, no gimmicks. People couldn’t scroll past a parcel locker that floated and rotated like a sci-fi prop.

Capture the Loop in Under Ten Minutes

1. Launch your model in Onshape, hit View, and toggle Auto-Rotate.

2. Start a screen-record. Loom works, QuickTime works, even the built-in Windows recorder works.

3. Let the model spin twice, stop the capture, and toss the clip into a GIF converter.

4. Trim the loop at four seconds. Square aspect firmly owns more mobile real estate than 16:9.

5. Compress below eight megabytes or LinkedIn will crush your bit rate.

If you need a low-tech path, export thirty-six still frames - one frame every ten degrees - and stitch them in Photoshop’s Timeline panel. Export as a looping GIF. Same hypnotic effect, no screen-capture software required.

Field Results

Across hardware accounts, short loops deliver two-to-four-times higher engagement than static carousel posts. One founder landed a demo request from a Tier-1 automotive supplier at eleven p.m. because an engineer happened to be doom-scrolling, paused on the spin, and forwarded it internally. That is serendipity you can engineer.

4. Embed Interactive 3-D Viewers That Turn Demos Into Decision Moments

Prospects love autonomy. When you hand them a link that lets them pan around the product, hide covers, and orbit joints, you hand them control. Control feels like ownership. Ownership leads to purchase intent.

A lead Series-A investor received a secure, view-only Onshape link and spent forty-five minutes exploring the qubit assembly, probing every mounting and connection. He turned up to the follow-up meeting pre-sold - the equivalent of three on-site demos in one session.

Build the Experience in Less Than an Hour

Right-click the assembly tab, hit Share, flip Link Sharing on, and set permission to View Only. Copy the URL. You can drop the link directly into an email, but the slick play is to embed the viewer in an iframe on your pricing page so visitors stay in your domain.

If you need sharper performance for a public launch, export a glTF from Onshape, upload to Sketchfab or Spline, tweak the poly count, and grab the embed code. Sketchfab supports hotspots, so you can pin value props directly on the geometry - “Sensor array: 92% lower drift.” Now the model does the pitch for you while your SDR sleeps.

The Conversion Angle

Interactive content outperforms passive content. A Kapost study shows it can drive double the conversions. People remember what they touch. Every additional second of engagement earns you algorithmic love from Google analytics and a softer hand-off to sales.

When our clients give prospects hands-on access to a model, those prospects book the next meeting about 40 - 45% faster than screenshot-only viewers. That readiness converts into deeper technical conversations and lets sales engineers focus on ROI, not onboarding.

5. Drop Your CAD Into AR or VR and Let Prospects Touch the Future Right Now

The fastest way to prove hardware value is to put hardware in the buyer’s space. Augmented Reality simulates that moment without freight costs or production risk. Think of an ops lead scanning a QR code and placing your one-ton robot arm at full scale on the factory floor. Suddenly layout planning, safety clearances, and cable runs feel real.

How to Launch AR in the Field

If you own an iPhone or iPad, the simplest route is the native Onshape app. Load your model, tap the AR cube, wave the device so it recognises a flat surface, and watch the digital twin materialise at scale. You can pinch to resize for desktop mode if space is tight.

Venturing Into Full VR

PTC recently released Onshape Vision for Apple Vision Pro. At launch the app enabled users to inspect a life-size industrial press in a living room, lift components apart with hand gestures, and watch teammates animate in real time. Expensive, yes. But trade shows are about attraction. A single headset and a 10-by-10 booth can own the hall.

Pulling the Five Plays Into One Revenue Machine

You do not have to execute all five at once. Start with the gap that is killing velocity this quarter.

• If your Series-A investors push you for polish, deploy renders this week.

• If sales calls get stuck on “but how does it work?” drop the exploded view.

• If lead generation is flat, weave loops into social posts.

• If late-stage sign-offs stall, embed an interactive viewer.

• If enterprise budgets freeze, trigger AR to get physical context without shipping crates.

Final Word and an Open Invitation

Deeptech marketing is a brutal street fight in the dark. Every piece of content has to work multiple times. Your Onshape files are sleeping giants waiting for a mission. Wake them up, aim them at revenue, and watch your cash-burn multiple shrink.

If you want a partner who lives this cycle every day - across robotics, quantum, advanced manufacturing, and defense - reach out to us.

Note: A huge shoutout to Delporte Joachim and his design!