If you are looking for an Inventor drafter on a project basis, you usually have a specific piece of drafting work that keeps getting pushed back. We draft and model, nothing more. We explicitly leave engineering, calculations and structural advice with you, because that is not our role. What we do provide is 2D drafting, 3D modelling, as-built drawings and revisions, often in high volume and with a lot of repetition.
Our team works from our own office, with our own licences, entirely remotely. That boundary is a deliberate choice.
It keeps agreements clear and prevents a drafting job from shifting halfway through into something we do not deliver. All our drafters have more than ten years of CAD experience, and the core of our team has around twenty-five years of combined practice. Our large, variable team scales with each project according to what the work demands. We pick up a new enquiry within 1 to 2 working days and then go through the project with you in a conversation. A short assignment is fine, and a small first job shows how quickly and accurately our team works.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Clients looking for an Inventor drafter on a project basis
Enquiries come to us mainly from engineering firms, manufacturers, contractors and architectural practices. The people at the table are managers, team leaders and owners who come from a technical background themselves. Their problem is similar in almost every conversation: the order book keeps filling, but the drawing office is full. Sometimes it is a peak of a few weeks, sometimes a project that runs for months alongside ongoing work. An Inventor drafter on a project basis fills that gap without you having to open a vacancy.
In the first conversation, we look at the nature of the work. Is it part drawings that recur in series, assemblies that need working up again after every change, or a revision pass on a set that has been in use for years? Those three questions determine how many drafters we deploy and at what pace we deliver. A manufacturer with a product line in variants has different work from a contractor who needs an assembly drawing for the shop floor. We adapt to that situation, not the other way round.
The trigger matters too. When a deadline could not slip, we have worked evenings and weekends, with days of fourteen to fifteen hours, because the date was fixed. That is not our standard rhythm, but it shows how we deal with a hard end date. What you hand over to us is drafting work. What you keep is control over the design and the engineering behind it. We keep that distinction firmly in place on every project-based assignment, even when the work runs for months.
Three review layers on every Inventor model
Every drawing and every model passes through at least three review layers before it goes out. A drafter produces the work. A second team member then checks it, with fresh eyes and without the maker's assumptions. Next, Sam, our team leader, checks the technical side, and finally Barry, our project manager, gives it a last look. That sequence sounds heavy for a single part drawing, but it pays for itself precisely in volume work.
If you work up a hundred almost identical plates, you do not make a mistake once but a hundred times. Our review layers catch exactly that kind of systematic deviation: incorrectly applied dimensioning, a layer that does not match your standard, a bill of materials that has not kept up with the latest change. In practice, this keeps the number of errors minimal. We do not promise a zero-error guarantee, because that does not exist in drafting. What we do is organise the process so that an error is spotted somewhere along the way and not only on the shop floor.
Sam has well over fifteen years of background in architecture, worked in Iran for seven years, ran his own design firm in the Netherlands and still works as an engineer. He directs the CAD team and carries technical responsibility. For you, that means a set that has already been checked internally before you open it. That saves correction rounds and, above all, frustration in your own drawing office, where the work would otherwise still have to be checked. If you want to reduce the number of correction rounds, you will usually notice the difference with the very first delivered batch.
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 cost of a drafter on a project basis
We charge by the hour or per project at a fixed price, and we make that choice together with you. For work whose scope can be clearly defined, such as a finished set of part drawings, a fixed project price is the obvious choice. For work that evolves, such as a revision project in which new documents keep turning up, an hourly rate is fairer for both sides. We only bill actual working hours. We stop the clock as soon as someone goes to get a coffee for five minutes. That may seem a detail, but over a project with hundreds of drawings it noticeably shifts the final total. What further keeps costs down lies in the preparation. The more complete the documents supplied and the clearer the drawing conventions, the less time we spend on detective work.
Repetition helps too: once our team has your standard at its fingertips, the second batch of drawings goes faster than the first. Smart set-up also saves time, because a part we build parametrically does not have to be redrawn for a new size. We do not work with prepaid hour bundles or a monthly hours subscription, so nothing keeps running when there is no work. Nor do you carry any ongoing payroll costs with us. We only make an estimate after we have seen the documents, because an estimate without drawings is worth little. In that conversation, we also state the assumptions underlying the estimate. If the scope of the job changes along the way, we flag it immediately rather than settling it afterwards.
Different from a freelancer or a permanent employee
A freelancer is one person; our team is a team. You only really notice that difference when something goes wrong. If a freelancer drops out through illness or holiday, the work stops and the search starts all over again. With us, we replace that person, so the work simply carries on. There is also room at the top end: if a project grows beyond expectations, we add as many people from our large, variable team as needed, without you having to arrange new contracts.
A new permanent employee is a different consideration. That means recruitment, onboarding time and a long-term commitment, while the peak they were needed for may be over in four months.
We do not ask for that commitment. The checking also differs. A freelancer delivers their own work, unchecked, and the final check lands on your desk. With us, that checking is done internally, in three layers. The point of contact is also fixed: Barry picks up the new enquiry, then Sam takes over the technical side as team leader, and you do not have to juggle five people.
We work in our own environment and with our own licences, so there is no workstation, licence or VPN access to arrange. You retain the intellectual property of every drawing we make. We will sign an NDA if you wish, even though clients have not asked for one so far. If you compare both routes side by side, you mainly look at continuity, at checking and at how long the peak will last.
Frequently asked questions about an Inventor drafter on a project basis
Let us handle your project-based Inventor work
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.