For many technical companies, having AutoCAD drafting done is the way to bring a full drawing office back under control. You keep control of the design and the technical decisions and outsource the actual drafting to our team, which does nothing else day in, day out. That makes the biggest difference at moments when your own drafters are already fully booked and there is still a deadline on the calendar.
We draft and model; we do not do engineering or structural calculations. Our drafters follow your drawing conventions and standards, so the result matches what is already there.
The process starts with a conversation in which we receive the details and usually also existing drawings. We then deliver in stages, gather your feedback and complete the work step by step. For engineering firms, architectural practices, contractors and manufacturers, this is a way to find capacity without expanding their permanent headcount. We work fully remotely, in our own environment and with our own licences.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Who benefits from having AutoCAD drafting done
Having AutoCAD drafting done is mainly relevant for engineering firms, architectural practices, contractors and manufacturers that have their own drawing office but not always enough capacity. The problem is rarely a lack of knowledge. Your team knows exactly what needs to be done, but there are not enough hours to get everything finished on time. A project leader sees a deadline approaching while the in-house drafters are already fully scheduled on other projects. A drawing office manager notices that a revision round on existing DWGs keeps slipping because there is simply no room in the schedule.
Sometimes it is a peak that lasts a few weeks, sometimes a structural shortage that an open vacancy cannot solve quickly enough. In both cases, shuffling things around internally does not help, because it only moves the problem to another project. We then draft the volume that is waiting, from 2D drafting to 3D modelling and as-built drawings, while your own team focuses on the design and the client relationship. Our drafters work according to the drawing conventions and standards you supply, so the result fits seamlessly with what is already in the project.
That is an important difference from a firm that follows its own conventions and leaves you to convert everything afterwards. Our aim is that you recognise your own CAD standards in the result, even though we produce the work elsewhere. For companies that find the same need keeps coming back, from a spring peak to a steady stream of revisions, that is a reason to set up this way of working on a structural basis rather than searching for a temporary solution every time.
Scaling up drafting with a large, variable team
If you are considering having AutoCAD drafting done, you often want to know how quickly extra capacity actually becomes available. Our team is already in place, with drafters who each have more than ten years of CAD experience. We do not need to recruit, onboard or train anyone before the project can start. We start a small project with a small crew who pick up the work and familiarise themselves with the existing drawings and the layer structure used. If demand grows, we deploy as many drafters as needed from our large, variable team, depending on what the project requires at that moment.
When things are urgent, we add extra people immediately, so an approaching deadline does not have to become a problem. That is exactly where an in-house drawing office often gets stuck, because filling a vacancy takes weeks to months while the work does not wait. Another issue clients run into is absence. If a drafter drops out through illness or goes on holiday, we bring in a replacement and the work simply carries on. You do not pay ongoing salary costs for someone who is temporarily unavailable and you do not have to find a solution yourself.
That makes planning more predictable, even when a project runs longer than expected. For a deadline that could not slip, we worked evenings and weekends, with days of fourteen to fifteen hours, until the work was done. That flexibility is built into the way our team is set up, and it is precisely that set-up that makes scaling up so smooth.
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 having AutoCAD drafting done costs: hourly or fixed price
Cost always plays a role when you have AutoCAD drafting done, even though it is not an amount we can quote here. We work on an hourly basis or for a fixed price per project, and we decide together with you which option suits best. For a project with a clear scope, such as a fully worked-out set of drawings, a fixed project price is often the obvious choice. For work whose scope is not yet fully defined, such as a revision round on existing drawings of varying quality, an hourly basis fits better. What counts in both cases is that we only bill pure working hours. If a drafter steps away for five minutes to get a coffee, we stop the clock. That may seem like a small detail, but over an entire project it certainly adds up. We do not work with a prepaid hours card or a monthly hours subscription, where hours are often lost or turn out to be insufficient.
What really keeps costs down is repetition. Recurring work, such as a piping diagram in which the same components keep appearing on the drawing, is something we handle more efficiently once the pattern is known. Parametric Revit families help too, because a part that has been built properly once can then be placed anywhere without being redrawn. Our estimate follows the first conversation, once it is clear what kind of drawings are involved, in which format and with which of your standards. A short assignment is a good way to experience first how our team works.
Collaboration and communication during the project
When you have AutoCAD drafting done, it helps not to have a different face on the other end of the line every time. 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 you can turn to him throughout the project. That fixed point of contact saves time, because nobody has to keep explaining what is going on or what has already been agreed.
We set the meeting rhythm per client and adjust it to the pace of the project. For one project, weekly contact is enough; for another, we meet every two days because the lead time is shorter.
Day-to-day contact runs by email, phone and meetings, and where necessary we come to you or you visit us. For one-off drafting jobs in AutoCAD, we simply send files back and forth by email, which gives enough overview for most projects. For larger projects, such as a greenhouse construction project with many separate components, we use software you can log into to follow progress yourself. That way you keep insight into what is finished and what still needs doing, without needing a separate status meeting each time.
We always start with a conversation in which we go through the details and the existing drawings, and we then deliver in stages so you can give feedback along the way. That keeps you involved without having to monitor the entire project yourself, even when several drafters from our team are working on the project at the same time.
Frequently asked questions about having AutoCAD drafting done
Let us handle your AutoCAD 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.