If you are considering a 3D drawings service, you usually have a specific file on your desk that calls for spatial insight. Sometimes it is a series of components that can no longer be grasped in two dimensions. Sometimes it is an installation layout whose sections contradict each other. OutsourceCAD provides outsourced CAD drafting to companies that lack drafting capacity of their own.
We do not do engineering; we do draft and model. That distinction is a deliberate choice. Calculations, structural advice and permits remain with you, while we clear the drafting work in volume.
The team works in Revit, AutoCAD and Rhino, supplemented by Inventor, Grasshopper and, to a limited extent, Dynamo and Vault. The work is done entirely remotely from our own office, with our own licences. Everyone who drafts for us has more than ten years of CAD experience behind them. We respond to a new request within 1 to 2 working days, after which we go through the project in a conversation and decide which part of the work lends itself to outsourcing.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
When a 3D drawings service makes sense
Outsourcing makes sense as soon as the drafting is predictable and your own drawing office is full. A peak in workload is the clearest example. For our clients, the reason is almost always capacity: too little time, too few drafters, or a series of projects arriving at the same time. In cases like these, a 3D drawings service provides immediate relief, because the volume shifts to a team that is already in place. Your own team then keeps the parts that need daily coordination with the end client, and we take over the modelling.
There are also situations in which we advise against sending work outside. Work that changes direction every day, where the principles have not yet been fixed, costs more consultation on both sides than it delivers. The same goes for a single small component that one of your own drafters can finish in half an hour. The dividing line is repetition and scale. As soon as the same action comes back dozens or hundreds of times, the numbers shift in favour of outsourcing.
In the first conversation, we help you work out which part lends itself to external execution and which is better kept in-house. We make that assessment openly, even if the outcome is that part of the package belongs with you. A short job is fine. We can start with a small first job, so your project leader can judge our speed and accuracy before a larger package follows. For both parties, that is the most level-headed way to test whether the collaboration suits the way your drawing office works.
What we deliver when you use our 3D drawings service
The emphasis is on 2D drafting and, where the project calls for it, 3D modelling. We also produce as-built drawings and process revision rounds on existing sets. If you hand your 3D drawings to us, you get models built to your own organisation's drawing conventions, not to an in-house standard of ours. We receive those conventions along with the existing files and the project details. From a model, we extract the drawings the file needs: floor plans, sections, elevations, detail sheets and part drawings. For MEP work, piping diagrams and layout drawings are added to that.
Files go out in DXF, DWG, Revit formats and STEP, and in practice in any common CAD format. We always work with the latest versions of the software, so a file comes back into your environment without conversion problems. The modelling itself is done in our own environment with our own licences. We do not log into the client's systems, which keeps the IT side of the collaboration simple. All intellectual property rights in what we produce belong to you. What we do not do is just as important to spell out.
We do not make calculations, give structural advice or handle permit procedures. That is not a limitation but a clear scope, because it keeps all the attention on the drafting itself. A job can consist of a single drawing package, but just as easily of a continuous stream of work running across several projects. That is how we have handled more than twenty projects and hundreds of drawings for Firefly.
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.
Where the time savings lie in repetitive 3D drafting
Most of the work that comes in is not complicated, but it is extensive and repetitive. That is exactly where the gain lies. A telling example comes from greenhouse construction, where many companies work in AutoCAD. AutoCAD is not smart at building components such as valves in piping systems. If you need a valve in 90 and also in 110, you redraw it by hand every time. With a parametric Revit family, that same component is in place in a single action. A smart component like this adapts to a new size or a different situation without anything having to be redrawn. The material schedule is linked: if the component changes, the schedule changes automatically. In that kind of work, this approach saves at least seventy per cent of the time. We build those components ourselves or clean up existing families and templates.
That depends on the state of the existing set. If a family set is very messy, rebuilding is sometimes quicker than repairing. We put that trade-off to you in advance, with our reasons. In high-volume 3D drafting, every action that disappears from the routine counts. A detail that comes back three hundred times and is set up properly once saves more lead time than a faster drafter could ever make up. A revision round on a large set of DWG files also falls into this category, because the same correction repeats across dozens of sheets. We are happy to take on this kind of work, precisely because it can be structured. That leaves you time for the work that genuinely requires professional judgement.
Consultation and point of contact while your 3D drawings are made
With us, a project starts with a conversation. Barry, our project manager, is usually the first point of contact for a new request, after which Sam, our team leader, takes over the technical side. That gives you one fixed point of contact, so you do not have to explain the situation over and over again. Sam has more than fifteen years of background in architecture, worked in Iran for seven years, ran his own design practice in the Netherlands and still works as an engineer.
He leads the CAD team and is responsible for the technical side and project supervision. We do not deliver everything at once at the end. The work goes out in parts, we gather feedback, adjust and carry on.
That way, a misunderstood starting point comes to light with the first partial package rather than at final delivery. The rhythm of consultation varies per client: sometimes every two days, sometimes weekly, depending on how urgent it is. Files go back and forth by email. On larger projects, such as greenhouse construction projects, we work with software you can log into to follow the project.
For standalone drafting we stick to email, because an extra system would only add a hurdle there. For day-to-day contact we use email, phone and meetings. We come to you or you come to us, although the work itself is done entirely remotely. Our focus is on the Netherlands and we work nationwide. If you want to know what that rhythm would look like for a specific project, you can put it to us via the contact form or by phone.
Frequently asked questions about our 3D drawings service
Let us produce your 3D drawings
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.