If you need a 3D drafter, you are really asking a simple question. Who will draw this work over the coming weeks, and will it follow our own structure? Our answer is just as direct as the question. We have a permanent team ready to take over the drafting, from individual revisions to long series of drawings, working to the standard the client supplies.
We draft and model; we do not do engineering, so the substantive decisions stay with your own team, where they belong.
Every one of our people has more than ten years of CAD experience, and they work from our own office, entirely remotely. Our focus is mainly on work with volume and repetition, because that is where the gains lie for a drawing office that has become stuck. On this page, you can read which work we take over, what we deliver, how we save time with parametric Revit families and which software and formats we use.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Repetitive work for which you need a 3D drafter
The work that comes to us almost always has the same profile. Lots of sheets, lots of repetition and little room for interpretation: exactly the part for which an experienced in-house drafter is too expensive and too scarce. Think of a series of detail drawings that barely differ per variant, a dossier of hundreds of sheets that needs a revision round, or a piping diagram in which the same valve in 90 and in 110 has to be placed on the sheet again and again. In AutoCAD, someone draws that by hand every time, and those minutes add up to days.
That is why a firm suddenly needs a 3D drafter, even though on paper there are enough people around. The hours are not spent on difficult work, but on work that comes back too often. We take over that part and leave the tricky, project-specific work to your own team. That is how we have completed more than twenty projects and hundreds of drawings for Firefly. The gain is not only in lead time. Once we pick up a series, we draw it consistently in one go, whereas with fragmented deployment every drafter does something slightly different.
Our large, flexible team scales with each project, depending on how much work is waiting. That keeps your own drawing office busy with the parts that require professional judgement. We agree in advance which part of the series sits with us and which part your firm keeps. We hold that boundary throughout the project, even if more work is added along the way.
What our drafters deliver
First and foremost, we deliver 2D drafting. That ranges from floor plans, sections and elevations to detail sheets and complete drawing series that follow the same layout throughout. Where the project calls for it, we model in 3D, for example to build components that then recur in several drawings. We also deliver as-built drawings, even when the material supplied is messy and partly drawn by hand. Revisions make up a large part of our work, because many clients have an existing set that needs updating rather than redesigning. We also build and maintain Revit families and templates.
We deliver source files, so your own team can carry on with them without any detours. With us, a delivery consists of blocks rather than one large shipment at the end. Every block passes our review layers before it goes out: a drafter draws, a second team member checks, Sam, our team leader, reviews it and Barry, our project manager, gives it a final check. If you need a 3D drafter for an ongoing project, you notice this mainly in the number of corrections left afterwards. What we do not deliver is just as clear. Calculations, structural advice and permits are not our job, because we draft.
We discuss that scope at the start, so there is no misunderstanding about it during the project. At the start, we record exactly what a delivery includes, including the required level of detail and sheet layout. If anything changes in that agreement along the way, we flag it before we continue drafting. That way it stays clear for both sides what will be on the table at the end.
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.
Parametric working saves our drafters hours
A parametric Revit family is simply a smart component. We build the component once, with its dimensions and properties built in, and then place it everywhere without redrawing it. If the situation does not quite match, the component adapts to the new size. The material schedule updates along with it, so as soon as the component changes, the schedule changes automatically. For a firm that needs a 3D drafter because of volume, that is the difference between drawing and assembling. The clearest example comes from greenhouse construction. Companies there often work in AutoCAD, and AutoCAD is not good at building up components such as valves in piping systems in a smart way. If you need a valve in 90 and in 110, you redraw it by hand every time. With a good family, it is in place in a single step.
In that kind of work, it saves at least seventy per cent of the time. Building from scratch is possible, and so is cleaning up existing families and templates. Which is wiser depends on the state of the existing set, because repairing a clogged-up family set sometimes costs more than starting again. We do not make that call on gut feeling, but by first going through the set and seeing how many variants it really contains. We then put the choice to the client, with a short explanation of what each route means for lead time. With a new set, we start small, with a single family that we have reviewed before we build the rest. That prevents a flawed parameter structure from ending up in dozens of components.
Software and formats when you need a 3D drafter
Our main programs are Revit, AutoCAD and Rhino. We also work in Inventor and Grasshopper, and to a limited extent with Dynamo and Vault. We always run the latest versions, so we can open and return client files without any hassle. File exchange runs via DXF, DWG, Revit formats and STEP, and via any other common CAD format that comes up in practice.
The work is done in our own environment with our own licences, so nobody needs to set up a workstation or account for us. Fitting in with the existing set is where things usually go wrong with others. That is why we ask in advance for your CAD standards and a sample file from a previously approved project.
We adopt layer structure, naming, hatching, stamps and sheet layout from it. If a convention is missing, we make a proposal and record it, so the series stays consistent even when several drafters work on it. If you need a 3D drafter who fits straight into your own structure, this is where you gain the most time. For one-off AutoCAD drafting work, files go back and forth by email.
For larger projects, we use software you can log into to follow progress. That keeps it visible what is done, without anyone having to call. If you are still working in an older version of a package, we adapt the exchange to it and deliver in a format that opens without problems at your end. We would rather ask about details like that at the start than at the first delivery.
Frequently asked questions when you need a 3D drafter
Let us take on your 3D 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.