Ondsel, the company that attempted to enhance the FreeCAD software to compete with commercial CAD programs, has announced its closure after operating since the beginning of 2023.
In the past, Ondsel released its own program, Ondsel ES, in multiple versions, improving the UX/UI interface to be more user-friendly than FreeCAD and adding features like SheetMetal for sheet metal modeling.
Brad Collette, the main developer of FreeCAD and a co-founder of Ondsel, acknowledged the tough competition in the CAD/CAM market. Over the two years of Ondsel’s existence, the company struggled to find a profitable business model while developing the software.
A significant amount of Ondsel’s code has already been integrated into FreeCAD previously, and any patches developed for Ondsel ES will also be shared with FreeCAD.
TLDR: Ondsel, a company trying to rival commercial CAD software, closed down after facing challenges in the market, despite contributing code to FreeCAD.
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