The work that lands at a drafting firm for conveyor technology is full of repetition: the same roller conveyor in a different length, the same support in a different profile, the same drive unit with a slightly different mounting plate. A single layout quickly produces dozens of sheets, and a series of machines or a complete line runs into the hundreds.
That volume is exactly where an in-house drawing office starts to struggle, because the drafters get stuck in work that mostly costs time and involves few real decisions.
We take that part off your hands. Our team is large and variable and scales with each project, everyone has more than ten years of CAD experience and every sheet passes through three review layers. We draft and model, while engineering and calculations stay with you as the client. Our clients are based in the Netherlands and we work remotely from our own office. Below you can see where the time savings are, how we build parts parametrically, what the delivered set contains and how we add capacity when a peak calls for it.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Repetitive drafting work in conveyor technology
In conveyor technology, volume hardly ever comes from one complicated drawing, but from many sheets that resemble each other. A conveyor gets a different length, a bend a different radius, a frame a different profile, and yet every sheet has to be right again, down to the holes in the support plate. That is where we look for time savings. We first map out which parts and assemblies keep recurring in a set, and in which variants. Then we agree with you which part we standardise and which part stays manual work for each situation.
What remains is a set in which a variant is a matter of filling in values rather than drawing it again. We use the same approach for revisions. If a change affects a profile that appears on forty sheets, the question is not how quickly a drafter can correct it forty times, but how the set is structured so that the change lands in one place. We draft to your CAD standards, so layer structure, linetypes, title block and sheet numbering follow your conventions, not ours.
Because several of our drafters work on the same package at the same time, Sam, our team leader, keeps everything aligned and a second team member checks every sheet. That keeps a set of hundreds of sheets consistent, even when it is produced in parts. Your project lead notices the result mainly in their own people, who get back to the work where their knowledge of the installation matters. The project lead keeps sight of progress without having to check every variant personally.
Parametric work at a drafting firm for conveyor technology
For repeat work we build parametric Revit families, in other words smart components. A component like that adapts to a different size or a new situation, so we make it once and then place it anywhere without redrawing it. The material schedule updates automatically: if the component changes, the schedule changes with it. In conveyor work this directly affects day-to-day practice, because that is exactly where the same parts recur in ranges of sizes. A comparable example from our own work comes from greenhouse construction.
Companies there often draft in AutoCAD, and AutoCAD is not smart at building up components such as valves in a piping system. If you need a valve in 90 and in 110, you draw it by hand each time. With a smart family it is in place in a single action. In that kind of work it saves at least seventy per cent of the time, and the same sum applies to supports, rollers, chain links or drive units that come in dozens of variants. We can clean up an existing family library or rebuild it from scratch.
Which is the wiser option depends on the state of the library: if it is very messy, rebuilding is sometimes quicker than repairing. We present that trade-off with a short rationale, so you make the choice yourself. We handle templates in the same way. Not everything needs to be parametric, and we do not push it for parts that only occur once, because building them costs more than it delivers. That is why we record what we will and will not standardise before the first drafter starts.
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.
What the delivered set contains
We deliver in the format your downstream process needs, and we agree on that in advance. In practice that means DXF, DWG, Revit formats and STEP, plus any other common CAD format. The set usually consists of 2D sheets such as assemblies, part drawings, elevations and details, supplemented with 3D modelling where that feeds the views and the material schedule. Where we have built families or templates, they come with it, because they belong to your set and not to us. We deliver in stages rather than all at once at the end. A first batch goes back to you, you review it, we process your feedback and carry on. As a result the set matches what you expect and any deviation surfaces while it is still small. For standalone AutoCAD drafting, files go back and forth by email.
For larger projects we use software you can log in to and follow the project. The intellectual property of everything we make belongs to you, so you can carry on with it independently, even if our collaboration ends. We work in our own environment with our own licences and always on the latest versions, so you do not need to arrange a seat, workstation or network access. If a change comes in later, we handle the revision in the same set and under the same conventions, so numbering and structure remain correct. We keep to the sheet numbering and layer structure you use, even when part of the set is new.
Scaling up with our drafting firm for conveyor technology
Capacity is the reason behind almost every enquiry we receive: too little time, too few drafters, or a peak your own team cannot handle. Our team is already in place, so we do not have to recruit first. An assignment often starts with one drafter, and for a large volume we deploy as many drafters as needed from our large, variable team. When something is urgent, we add people straight away.
We respond to a new enquiry within 1 to 2 working days, and we can start as soon as we have enough information. Meanwhile, little changes in how things are organised on your side. You keep one fixed point of contact: Barry, our project manager, picks up the enquiry, and Sam takes over the technical side as team leader.
There are no ongoing payroll costs, and in case of illness or holidays we replace someone so the work keeps moving. That is the difference with an extra permanent drafter or a freelancer who is still on the payroll or in the schedule during a quiet month. A short assignment is fine, and if you like we start with a small first package so you can judge our speed and accuracy on your own work.
We do not work with prepaid hour bundles or a monthly hours subscription, so nothing keeps running once the work is done. If it turns out along the way that more is needed, we simply scale up without setting up a new project. We work nationwide and our focus is on the Netherlands. If you want to know whether your peak is a good fit for us, send us the scope and the desired end date, and we will work out what it takes.
Frequently asked questions about our drafting firm for conveyor technology
Hand your conveyor drafting over to us
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.