A 3D drafting quote from us consists of pure working hours or a fixed project price, and nothing else. We only bill the time that actually goes into the model, and if someone steps away for five minutes to get a coffee, the clock stops. Ongoing payroll costs, a prepaid hours card or a monthly hours subscription are not part of how we work.
We decide together with you which option fits. For a model with a clear scope a fixed price is the obvious choice, and for work whose size only becomes clear once it is underway an hourly rate is fairer.
We model in Revit, Rhino and Inventor, and where needed we extract 2D output from the model for the shop floor. We do not do engineering, because our trade is drafting and modelling, often in high volume and with a lot of repetition. We respond to an enquiry within 1 to 2 working days and then go through the project with you in a meeting.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
From enquiry to delivery of 3D drafting work
It starts with a conversation in which we go through the brief. You tell us what needs to be produced, supply the details and usually send along existing drawings that need revising. We review that material before we commit to anything, because the condition of what you supply determines most of the time involved. We then set out the estimate and the approach, and agree whether we work on an hourly basis or for a fixed price. As soon as we have enough information, we put the first modeller on it.
We deliver in stages. A first component or first block goes back to you, so you can check the structure, dimensions and level of detail. We process that feedback before the rest of the model grows, because a deviation in the set-up costs ten times as much time later on. We agree the meeting rhythm in advance, every two days on a tight schedule and weekly on a calmer project. Files go back and forth by email, and on larger projects such as greenhouse construction projects we use software that you log into to follow the project.
Barry, our project manager, is usually the first point of contact for a new enquiry, and Sam, our team leader, then takes over the technical side. We are happy to visit you or host your team at our office, but we carry out the work itself remotely from our own office. At the end we deliver in the agreed format, from Revit files and STEP to DWG and DXF.
As-built and revision work in practice
Part of our work starts with material nobody is keen to open any more. At Firefly we received as-built material in which the existing drawings had been printed incorrectly and were partly drawn by hand. The whole set was hard to read and messy, and on some sheets the dimensions were missing entirely. We could have called the client about it every day. We did not.
Instead, we worked it out ourselves, reconstructed the logic behind the old sheets and still delivered a clean set. Anything that genuinely could not be traced we bundled together and raised in one go, so the project lead received a single list rather than a stream of separate questions. We took two lessons from that project. The first is that with messy material we prefer to charge by the hour, because the amount of investigative work is hard to estimate in advance. The second is that it pays to send a trial sheet back early, so the client can see how we are interpreting their old drawing.
The same applies to a three-dimensional brief. A first modelled component shows whether our approach is right faster than a long email full of questions. We have now completed more than twenty projects and hundreds of drawings for Firefly, and that way of working grew out of them. We bring the same approach to every job where the source material leaves something to be desired. A messy source set is no reason for us to turn work down, but it is a reason to pin down the agreements on hours and delivery more tightly.
No ongoing payroll costs and no idle staff once the peak is over. If one of our people is off sick or on holiday, we replace them and the work simply carries on.
Drawing conventions and layer structure in 3D drafting
We work to your standard and drawing conventions, in 3D too. That sounds obvious, but in practice it is the biggest source of rework. A model that is technically correct but has the wrong naming, different parameters or another layer structure still costs your own team an afternoon of tidying up. That is why we ask in advance for a reference project, a layer list, a template and the applicable title block. If there is a project manual, we read it before we start. If documentation is missing, we derive the conventions from existing files and submit our assumptions for approval. In 3D drafting it goes further than layers alone. It is also about how families are built, how parameters are named, how worksets are used and how the 2D output comes out of the model.
We stick to what you are used to, even when one of our drafters would approach it differently. Consistency with the rest of the project folder outweighs our own preference. We do work in our own environment with our own licences, so we never ask for access to your network. The delivered files simply slot into it, in DXF, DWG, Revit formats or STEP. If a convention turns out to be a problem during the work, we flag it and do not change anything on our own initiative. You then decide whether to adjust the convention or have us solve it within the existing rules. That choice is yours, not ours.
Three review layers on every piece of drafting work
Every model and every drawing passes at least three pairs of eyes at our office. A drafter or modeller produces the work, a second team member checks it, Sam then reviews it as team leader and Barry goes over it last as project manager. Each layer looks at something different. The first check covers the content, meaning dimensions, connections and whether the component matches what was supplied.
The second looks at structure and standards, meaning naming, layers, parameters and output. The final look is taken from the client's perspective, focusing on legibility and on whether the whole thing is usable for whoever opens it later.
What this prevents in practice is mainly errors that multiply. A component with a wrong parameter is wrong dozens of times over in a large model, and fixing that takes longer than checking it. In a revision round, our checks stop an old error in the source set from quietly migrating into the new drawings. We keep this sequence in place even when a job is urgent. When we worked evenings and weekends for a delivery that could not slip, the review layers stayed firmly in place.
Because we work this way, the number of errors stays minimal in practice. If you want to know exactly how we would set up these checks on your own set, we can go through it in the first conversation. We are happy to show where, in a previous set, we caught errors from the source material before they ended up in the delivery.
Frequently asked questions about a 3D drafting quote
Request a clear quote for your 3D drafting
Send us your documents and drawing conventions and we will let you know within one to two working days what we can take on and when.