If you are considering whether to hire an external Inventor drafter, it is rarely for a single drawing. It is almost always about volume. Series of parts that recur in five sizes, assemblies that need working up again after every change, hundreds of sheets that follow the same structure.
That kind of work fills a drawing office at speed and squeezes out the interesting work. We take over exactly that part. For our only client to date, Firefly, we have completed more than twenty projects and delivered hundreds of drawings, with repetition as the common thread.
Our team consists of drafters who each have more than ten years of CAD experience, and the core has around twenty-five years of combined practice. Our scope is drafting and modelling; engineering falls outside it. Our large, variable team scales with each project, depending on how many sheets there are. Where there is repetition, there is time to be saved, and we capture those savings as early as possible in the project.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
An as-built file straightened out by an external drafter
One of the assignments that shows clearly what we do came in as a pile of as-built material. The existing drawings had been printed incorrectly, partly supplemented by hand and barely legible on some sheets. There were dimensions that contradicted each other, and information was missing that was actually needed to work it up properly. The easy route would have been to call the client every day with a list of questions. We worked most of it out ourselves. By laying the sheets side by side, following the logic of the installation and recognising the recurring patterns, we were able to reconstruct the vast majority without burdening the client.
What we genuinely could not deduce, we bundled into a short round of questions instead of ten separate phone calls. The result was a set that did add up and that the client could continue to use. We still apply what we learned from that. Messy input is the rule rather than the exception in as-built and revision work, so we factor in detective work rather than being surprised by it.
We bundle questions, we deliver in stages so a wrong assumption does not carry through the whole set, and we record which choices we have made. If you are considering hiring an external drafter, that is where things go wrong or right. Not in the drafting itself, but in how input that does not add up is handled. That is what makes or breaks the return on an external drafter.
What we deliver when you hire an external Inventor drafter
Specifically, we deliver 2D drafting, 3D modelling, as-built drawings and revisions. In 2D, that means floor plans, elevations, sections, detail sheets, part drawings and assembly sheets, including dimensioning, hatching, references and a correctly completed title block. In 3D, we build models, work up assemblies and derive the drawings from them, so a change to the model carries through to the sheets. Revision work is a separate category: we take over existing DWGs, remove the errors and the outdated situation, and return a consistent set. As-built work means we record the situation as built, based on what you supply.
We also build parametric components when the work lends itself to it. Such a smart component adapts to a new size or situation, and the material schedule updates automatically. In piping for greenhouse construction, that saves at least seventy per cent of the time, because a valve in 90 and in 110 would otherwise have to be drawn by hand every time. What we do not deliver is engineering. Calculations, structural advice and permit procedures are not our remit, and we keep that separation strict.
We deliver the output in DXF, DWG, the Revit formats or STEP, and in practice in any common CAD format. If you hire us externally, you are hiring drafting capacity with fixed quality control around it, not a consultancy. That makes the division of roles clear for both sides from the very first sheet. We agree in advance exactly what falls within the assignment, down to the level of drawing types, numbers of sheets and the required exchange format.
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 delivered set from an external Inventor drafter
A delivery contains more than a folder of files. We deliver the source files in the format you use, with the folder structure and file names you work with. Where needed, an exchange format is included too, such as a DWG or a STEP, so a party further down the chain can open the file without the same package. We keep the structure clean: layers in the right place, no floating geometry, no leftover construction lines and no blocks nobody can place any more. That sounds obvious, but with large series in particular it determines whether your own team can carry on smoothly. When structuring the set, we think about the downstream process. If the set is going to the shop floor, our team pays attention to legibility and plot settings. If it is going to cost estimating, the material schedule has to be correct and update with changes.
If it is going to a next design round, the model has to be editable and not locked down. That is why we ask in the first conversation what happens to the set after us. We also deliver in stages, so corrections can be made along the way rather than afterwards. You hold the intellectual property of everything we draw, so there is no dependency attached. On larger projects, you can log in to the software in which the project runs and follow progress. For standalone drafting, everything simply goes by email. At handover, we pass on the choices we made along the way, so nobody has to guess later.
Your CAD standards, layer structure and conventions
We work to your standard, not to a house style of our own. We receive those conventions from you: the template, the layer structure, the naming of layers and files, the blocks, the text styles, the title block and the dimension style. We do not start without that information, because a technically perfect drawing that does not fit the existing set still takes hours to straighten out.
If we receive a template, we draw in it. If there is no template but there is an existing set, we derive the conventions from it and submit them to you for confirmation. With the first part we deliver, you check whether we are applying the standard correctly.
That early check is more important than it seems, because a deviation in the layer arrangement would otherwise run through two hundred sheets. Sometimes we come across a set that has become cluttered over the years, with duplicate layers, families nobody uses any more and templates whose logic nobody remembers. We then point it out and discuss whether cleaning it up pays off or whether rebuilding is faster.
With a very messy set, rebuilding is often the quicker route, but that choice is yours. We do not redraw it unasked. Sam, our team leader, safeguards consistency across the entire project, and in our review rounds we look explicitly at the standard and not just at the technical content. That way, the set stays internally uniform, even when many drafters have worked on it.
Frequently asked questions about hiring an external Inventor drafter
Hand your Inventor volume work 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.