We are shutting down Ondsel
In this postmortem from 2024, @pabs3 candidly breaks down the dissolution of their startup, examining the fatal assumptions, misallocated resources, and market dynamics that led to its shutdown.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Early signals were often rationalized away instead of prompting an immediate pivot in distribution or pricing.
The psychological toll of running out of capital compounds operational friction in a solo or small team setup.
Key Antidote: Validate paying willingness before committing months to building sophisticated product features.
Community Debate Themes:
Community discussions on HN centered on identifying product-market fit early, avoiding vanity metrics, and the emotional recovery process after shutting down.
CATEGORY Postmortems & Failures →
HISTORICAL ERA Post-ZIRP & AI (2023–2026)
COMMUNITY SCORE 317 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 184 comments
For a long while, I was trying to track CAD applications for a wiki for a then opensource CNC:
https://web.archive.org/web/20211126210706/https://wiki.shapeoko.com/index.php/CAD ↗
(trying to get that back into shape at: https://old.reddit.com/r/shapeoko/wiki/cad ↗ ob. discl., I work for Carbide 3D)
and FreeCAD seemed simultaneously the most ambitious, and the most promising --- hopefully v1.0 will pay off on that, and result in a tool which can be used widely --- but it will eventually need some sort of commercial support. Ondsel seemed a good fit for that, and it's unfortunate that they didn't make it.
Notable other options include:
- Solvespace --- a venerable and simple tool, it is barebones to the extent that many folks won't be able to accept it
- Dune 3D --- this is an incredibly elegant and usable tool, which I hope FreeCAD will look to in terms of UI, previously discussed here previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37979758 ↗ and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40228068 ↗
- BRL-CAD --- _the_ venerable choice, but the interface is so old school and programming-like, most folks won't even consider it
- OpenSCAD --- 3D modeling for programmers --- the great thing about it is, anything which one can describe mathematically can be modeled --- the awful thing about it is, what one can model is limited by one's mathematical knowledge. A further concern is that DXFs from it are just polylines, no arcs --- I've been working to address that using OpenPythonSCAD at: https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview ↗
LibreCAD is workable for 2D, though I only use it for file conversion.
The other notable options are OnShape (free for public designs), Alibre (quite affordable), Solidworks for Makers (for values which include non-commercial usage watermarking).
Every time I have a personal project and want to make a simple CAD drawing of a building or a simple model, as I would using AutoCAD at work, I go through the same song and dance. I look around at the options online, my jaw hangs open at the cost of any commercial CAD subscription/licence, then I get frustrated by a glaring lack of functionality or useability while trying some free/open source solution, and resort to a 30 day trial or MSPaint/paper.
Some of the comments already mention how blender's existence is predicated upon it filling a niche in certain senses, instead of trying to achieve feature parity with an entrenched giant. That makes sense, and it's unfortunate, as this space could use an open source option with Blender's polish. In my own industry, mining, I am certain some commercial interests would happily make their product an extension/plugin for a polished FreeCAD (or other), were it at that point.
Truly bummed about this one.
I’d been learning CAD with Ondsel, and have printed off half-a-dozen of my models to help around the house.
If this comment finds its way to the team, I just want to say thanks.
The topo naming fix and the assembly workbench were enormous contributions to the community that will be with us always.
But I really believed in Ondsel’s vision for an online repo for 3d models.
Unfortunate but extremely predictable. The commercial market for CAD cares about CAD that actually works, not free software ideals. FreeCAD is simply not in the same league as commercial CAD like Solidworks, NX, Creo, etc. IMO it's not even in the same league as SolveSpace, at least last time I used it (which was admittedly some years ago).
This is a huge shame. Ondsel brought much-needed focus to the freecad development process.
I hope that with them gone the project doesn't revert to the mindset of "everyone gets their own fiefdom (workbench) to manage" that's resulted in instabilities and fractured user experience in the past.