The need for a drawing set service rarely arises at the start of a project; it usually surfaces once the drawing office gets stuck in a peak. A project lead sees the number of outstanding drawings climbing while the deadline stays put and the in-house drafters are already fully booked with other work.
At that point, they look for a team that can step in without the client first having to recruit and train someone. With our large, flexible team, we scale with each project, and everyone who works with us has more than ten years of CAD experience.
We work to the drawing conventions you supply, so the set that comes back matches what is already there. The process starts with a conversation in which we go through the details and usually the existing drawings, after which we deliver in stages and gather feedback. For a project lead who wants to protect their own schedule without compromising on the quality of the set, that is a direct way to clear the backlog.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Using a drawing set service or keeping it in-house
Not every drawing set needs to go outside, and it is worth making that distinction up front. If it is a small, one-off set that fits within the schedule using existing capacity, your own team can often draw it faster, if only because no time is lost handing over context. As soon as the volume increases, the deadline draws closer or several disciplines come together in the same set, that trade-off shifts. Having us produce a drawing set is then often quicker to arrange than temporarily expanding your own team, because you do not have to recruit or train anyone.
Our team is already in place, with a core that has around twenty-five years of combined experience, and we adjust in size as the project requires. During a peak lasting a few weeks, scaling up internally is often not realistic, whereas we fill exactly that gap without you having to let someone go after the peak. Conversely, a client who already has sufficient capacity but temporarily needs a specific set outside their usual work can also benefit from us, because we adopt your standard rather than imposing our own approach.
The choice therefore depends less on the size of the company and more on whether the existing drawing office can handle the job within the time available. If the answer is no, outsourcing is usually the faster route, especially when a large part of the set consists of repetition that we can start on straight away.
What a drawing set service actually covers
A drawing set service usually delivers a coherent package rather than loose, standalone drawings. Depending on the assignment, the set consists of 2D drawings, 3D models, as-built drawings or revisions of an existing set, and often a combination of these. On a new project, we build the set up from the model, using Revit, AutoCAD or Rhino as the main software, supplemented by Inventor or Grasshopper when the project calls for it. If an existing set needs updating, we first look at its current state and then make the changes without turning the rest of the set upside down.
The file formats match what you need further down the process, from DXF and DWG to Revit formats and STEP files. Wherever possible, we work with parametric components, so a part that recurs does not have to be drawn again each time. That is particularly relevant for sets with a lot of repetition, such as a piping schematic in which the same type of valve appears in different sizes. We deliver the set in stages rather than all at once at the end, so you can review and adjust course before the whole project is complete.
That keeps the chance small that a wrong assumption only comes to light at the final delivery, and leaves room to change direction along the way without redoing the entire project. We also go through your drawing conventions in advance, such as dimensioning, layer names and text size, so the set looks consistent from the first drawing to the last. If you already use a template, we take that template as the basis, so no time is lost recreating something that already exists.
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.
The repetitive drafting work a drawing set requires
Most of a drawing set often consists of work that repeats itself, and that is exactly where the biggest time savings lie once we take that work over. A contractor who needs dozens of similar details in different variants, or a manufacturer who draws the same component in several sizes, benefits from an approach in which we build up that repetitive part systematically instead of redrawing it by hand every time. In AutoCAD, a drafter usually draws such a component separately over and over again, whereas a parametric Revit family builds the component once and then adapts to every new situation or size. If you need a valve in 90 and 110 millimetres, you no longer have to draw it out separately, but place the family in a single action, including the material schedule, which updates automatically.
In this kind of work, that saves at least seventy percent of the time. For a drawing set with a lot of this kind of repetition, we therefore first check whether existing families and templates are still usable, or whether we can rebuild them faster. If the existing set is very messy, we often choose to rebuild, even though that initially feels like a detour. For you, this means the time savings lie not only in outsourcing the work itself, but also in the way we build up the repetitive part, with a structure that can be reused on a future project rather than one-off work that ends up in the bin after delivery.
Working with a fixed point of contact and a set consultation rhythm
Having a drawing set produced by an external team raises questions about the collaboration for many clients, and those questions deserve a concrete answer. Barry, our project manager, is usually the first point of contact for a new enquiry, after which Sam, our team leader, takes over the technical side and handles project supervision. That means you always have the same point of contact, even when our team adjusts in size behind the scenes.
We agree the consultation rhythm with each client, from contact every two days on a project with a tight deadline to weekly meetings on a calmer project. Files usually go back and forth by email, while on larger projects, such as in greenhouse construction, we use software that you can log into to follow the progress of the set.
Day-to-day contact takes place by email, phone or meetings, and where practical we visit you or you come to us, even though we do the drafting itself remotely. That combination of a fixed point of contact and a clear consultation rhythm saves you from having to go back and forth between different contacts whenever a question comes up.
For a project lead who already has their hands full with their own team, it is a way to have the set produced without the surrounding communication taking extra time. The intellectual property of the set we deliver belongs to you, and if you want to put that in writing, you can agree a non-disclosure agreement with us, even though nobody has asked for one so far.
Frequently asked questions about our drawing set service
Let us handle your drawing set
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.