For many drawing offices, having CAD drafting done is the answer to a peak the in-house team can no longer handle, a deadline that is closer than the schedule allows, or a vacancy for a drafter that has been open for months. We fill those gaps with a large, variable team of drafters who all have more than ten years of CAD experience, and we scale up or down per project as the volume demands.
We draft and model, we do not do engineering, so the work is about developing drawings and models, not calculations or design decisions.
We work remotely, from our own environment and with our own licences, although you are always welcome to visit. 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 way you do not have to recruit a new employee for work that tails off again once the peak is over.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
From first conversation to partial delivery when you have CAD drafting done
If you are thinking of having CAD drafting done, it starts with a conversation in which we go through the project together. You supply the details and usually existing drawings that need revising as well, so our drafters get a clear picture of the job before we commit to anything. Based on that, we decide which drafters are needed and how to split the work into manageable pieces. We then do not deliver the whole package in one go, but in stages: a first batch of drawings goes to you, your feedback comes back, and we process it before picking up the next batch.
That rhythm differs from client to client. With some we check in every two days because the pace is high, with others a weekly catch-up is enough. Files usually go back and forth by email, and on larger projects, such as in greenhouse construction, we use software you can log into to follow progress yourself. Day-to-day contact runs through email, phone and meetings, and where needed we visit you or you come to us.
Barry remains the first point of contact throughout, even when Sam is directing the technical side of the project. For you, that means one fixed line of contact, even when several drafters are working on the project at the same time. It keeps having CAD drafting done a transparent process rather than a black box that only produces something at the very end, which is exactly what causes stress when a deadline looms.
A real-world example from our revision and as-built work
A good example of what having CAD drafting done delivers in practice is the as-built work we carried out for Firefly, the client with whom we have now completed more than twenty projects and hundreds of drawings. It involved as-built material where the existing drawings had been printed incorrectly and were partly drawn by hand, which made the whole set hard to read and messy. Rather than calling the client constantly with questions about unclear details, we worked it out ourselves and still delivered clean drawings.
That example shows where the value of outsourced drafting often lies: not in retyping what is already there, but in spotting errors, logically filling in missing information and bringing loose pieces together into a consistent whole. The same applies to a revision round on existing drawings, because an old set may contain outdated layers, inconsistent dimensions or a dated CAD standard that we do not simply copy one to one. We first look at how the existing material is structured before making changes, so the new information connects logically with what was already there.
That approach, working things out ourselves instead of going back to the client over every small point, is exactly what a project lead needs when their own drawing office is already at capacity. We stick to the same way of working even with a half hand-drawn file. It saves time on both sides and stops a revision from taking longer than the original drawing did to make.
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.
Drafting to the client's CAD standards and layer structure
Having CAD drafting done by an external team only works well if the output matches what you are already used to, which is why we always work to your own standard and drawing conventions. That means we adopt the layer structure, file naming and the way details are presented exactly as you supply them, not the way we would find most convenient ourselves. In Revit we build on existing families and templates, while in AutoCAD it is often about a specific layer structure and block setup that has been in use for years. If an existing family set has become very messy after years of small changes, we discuss with you whether cleaning it up is enough or whether rebuilding it is faster. That is not a standard choice; it depends on the state the material is in when it reaches us.
We always work with the latest versions, from Revit, AutoCAD and Rhino to Inventor and Grasshopper, and we deliver files as DXF, DWG, in Revit formats or as STEP files, or in virtually any other common CAD format you use. Because we stay strictly within your existing standard, a project lead never has to spend time correcting delivered work to fit their own format. A drafter who joins halfway through also follows the same conventions within our team. That is precisely why having CAD drafting done by an external team only works when we take that alignment seriously from the start.
Quality control when you have CAD drafting done
When you have CAD drafting done, quality is often the first concern for a project lead who has not worked with an external drafting team before. With us, every drawing goes through at least three review layers before it leaves the building. A drafter produces the work, a second team member checks that result for errors, compliance with the standard and completeness, after which Sam, as team leader, reviews it himself, drawing on more than fifteen years of technical background in architecture.
As a final step, Barry, as project manager, looks over the work before it goes to you. In practice, that sequence of four pairs of eyes prevents many of the small errors that would otherwise only come to light during construction, such as a wrongly copied dimension or a detail that does not connect with an adjacent component.
With a series of similar drawings, such as a set of part drawings with small variations, this matters even more, because an error left in the first drawing repeats itself in every following variant. Because the core of our team has around twenty-five years of combined experience, and everyone has been working with CAD for more than ten years, the number of errors stays minimal in practice.
For you, that means you do not need to set up any extra checks on your side when you have CAD drafting done, because we have already carried out those checks before we deliver. It saves time at handover and means a project lead does not have to schedule a separate review round on top of the normal work in their own drawing office.
Frequently asked questions about having CAD drafting done
Have your CAD drafting done by 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.