When you want to hire a technical drafter, the first things we ask about are your file format and your CAD standards. That is not a formality. A drawing that is technically correct but comes back with a different layer structure still needs a clean-up round on your side, and then the gain is gone.
That is why we work to your CAD standards and drawing conventions, which you supply to us. We deliver in DXF, DWG, the Revit formats or STEP, and in any other common CAD format used within your organisation.
OutsourceCAD provides outsourced CAD drafting for companies that lack drafting capacity. We draft and model and stay out of engineering. The work is done remotely, in our own environment and on our own licences, by a team in which everyone has been working with CAD for more than ten years. This page explains what we deliver, who it is relevant for, how a project runs and how quality control is organised.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
What we deliver when you hire a technical drafter
Most of the work that comes in is 2D drafting, supplemented by 3D modelling where the project calls for it. We also produce as-built drawings and process revisions to existing sets. At drawing level, that means floor plans, sections, elevations, detail sheets, part drawings and assembly drawings. MEP work adds piping schematics and arrangement drawings, and fabrication work adds the sheets that differ slightly from part to part. If you want to hire a technical drafter, you are usually looking for exactly that kind of volume rather than a single special sheet.
The output follows your conventions. Layers, naming, title blocks, sheet layout and scales match your existing library, so a package fits into your environment without post-processing. The main packages we work in are Revit, AutoCAD and Rhino. On top of those come Inventor and Grasshopper, plus Dynamo and Vault to a limited extent. We run the latest versions, which prevents a returned file from failing on a version conflict. Besides individual drawings, we build parametric Revit families: components that adapt to a different size or a different situation.
The material schedule updates along with them, so a change to the component flows through automatically. On work with a lot of repetition, that saves at least seventy per cent of the time. We can also clean up or rebuild existing families and templates, depending on the state the set is in. What we do not deliver is a calculation, a structural assessment or a permit application. Ownership of everything we draw lies with you, without any reservation on our side.
Why clients hire a technical drafter
Almost every enquiry is triggered by a capacity problem. There is too little time, there are too few drafters, or a peak comes along that the in-house team cannot handle. That problem affects engineering firms, architectural practices, contractors and manufacturers, and more broadly companies where technical drafting work keeps piling up. The person we speak to is usually a manager, a team leader or an owner. What they bring to the table is rarely a technical question.
It is about a schedule that no longer adds up and work that has to be done today rather than in six months. Recruiting a drafter takes months, and an open vacancy does not solve this week's peak. In those situations, hiring a technical drafter is the fastest route, because the team on our side is already in place and already running. What stands out is that the bottleneck almost never lies in the most difficult work. The drawing office usually prefers to keep complex details with a lot of client contact in-house.
What gets left behind is the repetition: yet another section, a revision round across dozens of sheets, or a series of part drawings that differ only slightly. The clients we work with are based in the Netherlands, and we cover the whole country. This service started last year because a client asked for it, and we then set it up as a regular service. So far we work with one client, Firefly, for whom we have completed more than twenty projects and hundreds of drawings. There are no public reviews yet, so we let the delivered work make the case.
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 process from first conversation to staged delivery
Every project opens with a conversation in which we go through the job. Barry, our project manager, is usually the first point of contact for a new enquiry, after which Sam, our team leader, picks up the technical side. That gives you one fixed contact, so you do not have to explain the background again each time. In that conversation we go through the details, together with the existing documents, which often need revising. As soon as there is enough information to draft responsibly, we can get to work. We then do not deliver everything at once at the end. The work goes out in stages: we gather feedback, process it and carry on with the next batch. That rhythm has a practical advantage: a misunderstood starting point surfaces in the first package rather than at final delivery, where fixing it would mean working through the complete set.
How often we meet varies by client. With a tight schedule it is every two days, on calmer projects weekly. For standalone drafting work, files are exchanged by email. On larger projects, for example in greenhouse construction, we use software you can log into to follow progress. Day-to-day contact otherwise runs through email, phone and meetings. Visits in either direction are possible, although the work itself remains remote. If you want to hire a technical drafter without handing over a large package straight away, you can start with a small first assignment and decide on that basis whether the larger volume follows.
Review layers on the work of a hired technical drafter
Outsourced drafting only pays off if little follow-up work remains. That is why every package passes through at least three review layers before it is sent. The drafter produces the work. A second team member then checks it, looking mainly at structure and at consistency between the sheets. After that, Sam assesses the whole package from the technical side and from the perspective of project supervision.
Finally, Barry goes over the package before it goes to you. That layering keeps the number of errors minimal in practice. What these checks prevent is rarely spectacular, but it is costly: a layer that does not match the library, a dimension that differs between two sheets, a title block that has not been updated, or a revision applied to one section but not another.
It is precisely these deviations that cost the receiving side the most time, because they only show up once the package is already in use. A telling example of how we handle this comes from Firefly. There we received as-built material in which the existing drawings had been printed incorrectly and partly drawn by hand, making them hard to read and messy.
Instead of calling the client about it every day, we sorted it out ourselves and still delivered it neatly. We hold no certifications or quality marks, and we do not give that impression either. The quality control lies in the way we work and in the experience of the team, which together has around twenty-five years of practice.
Frequently asked questions about hiring a technical drafter
Hand your technical 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.