When you outsource architectural drafting, a peak in your drawing office no longer holds up a project that really needs to keep moving. If the work stays with your own team, other drawings get pushed back, the deadline comes under pressure and the pile of pending revisions keeps growing.
We take that work off your hands with our large, variable team, which is already in place and scales with the size of each project. We work fully remotely, and every piece goes through at least three review layers before it comes back to you.
Barry, our project manager, is your first point of contact, after which our team leader Sam, who has more than fifteen years of background in architecture, takes over the technical side and the project supervision. That way you keep control of the project without your own team working overtime to get everything finished on time. We follow your drawing conventions throughout, so our output fits seamlessly into your existing set of drawings.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Where the time savings lie in architectural drafting
Most architectural drafting is not about the one unique design, but about the many variants and revisions around it that come back in high volume. A floor plan that needs to be slightly different, an elevation that recurs on a second site, or a detail your drawing office draws out again and again: that is where most of the time goes. The time savings of outsourcing lie precisely in that repetitive part, because your own team often cannot clear that volume alongside ongoing projects.
A revision round on an existing set of DWGs, where dimensions, layouts or details have to line up across several drawings at once, is a typical example of work we take on. Because our large, variable team is already in place and scales with each project, we process a big revision round in a short time without compromising on quality. When it is urgent we add people straight away, so a deadline that cannot slip is actually met, even if that means working evenings or weekends.
This is not about coming up with a new design, but about working through the resulting drawings quickly and accurately. Your drawing office stays free for the design work itself, while we handle the high-volume part remotely. Some of that work reaches us as outdated, hand-drawn drawings that we first convert before anyone works on them further, and we take that on as part of the job too.
What outsourcing architectural drafting delivers
What we deliver when you outsource architectural drafting is broad, from floor plans and elevations to sections, detail drawings and MEP drawings that have to align with one another. Alongside new 2D drafting, we also provide 3D modelling, as-built drawings and revisions to existing documents that no longer match the current situation. An as-built file that was partly drawn by hand and is hard to read is something we first work out before delivering it again, clean and complete. Our output comes in the format you need, so DWG, DXF or Revit formats, depending on the software you continue working in.
For engineering firms, architectural practices and contractors, that often means a combination of architectural drawings and matching MEP drawings within the same project. We deliver in stages, after which you give feedback that we process straight away, rather than handing everything over in one go at the end of the project. Every partial delivery goes through at least three review layers, from the drafter who produces the work to Sam as team leader and Barry as project manager, who check it last. On a long-running project, such as a greenhouse construction project with many separate components, you can log in to an environment where you follow the progress of the drafting.
For more ad hoc AutoCAD drafting we deliver by email, without the need for a separate environment. So you get back not just drawings, but a complete, checked set of documents aligned with your own standard. Exactly which drawing types are needed and in what order we deliver them is something we agree in the first conversation.
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.
Smart Revit families in architectural drafting
Parametric work with Revit families also plays a major role in architectural drafting as soon as components recur in multiple variants or sizes. A smart family, in other words a smart component, adapts to a new situation or a different size without anyone having to draw it again from scratch. We build the component once and then place it in every drawing that needs it, instead of drawing it out by hand each time. The material schedule updates automatically, so if a component changes size, the schedule changes with it without anyone updating it manually. A well-known example from greenhouse construction shows what that delivers: companies there redrew a piping system with valves in sizes such as ninety and one hundred and ten by hand every single time. With a smart family, that same valve lands in the right place in a single action, which saves at least seventy percent of the time in that kind of work.
In architectural drafting it applies just as much to repeating building elements, such as window frames, stairs or facade elements that keep recurring in slightly different sizes within a project. We clean up an existing family library when it is still usable, or build an entirely new one when the old library has become too cluttered. Which approach makes more sense depends on the state of the existing library, not on a fixed rule we apply to every project. That way we only need to build an architectural detail that recurs in ten places in a project properly once, rather than ten separate times.
Software and file formats for outsourced drafting
Outsourcing architectural drafting to us means working in Revit, AutoCAD and Rhino as our main software, always in the latest versions. Where a project calls for it we add Inventor or Grasshopper, and to a limited extent Dynamo and Vault for specific parts. We receive and deliver files in DXF, DWG, Revit formats or STEP, and in practice in almost any format you use.
Our starting point is always that we fit in with your existing set, not the other way round, so the software follows from what you already use. Layer structure, drawing naming and dimensioning style also follow the standard and drawing conventions you provide.
That way you do not have to translate a delivered drawing or an opened model into your own way of working before you can carry on. We work in our own environment with our own licences, not in yours. We usually send files back and forth by email, while on a larger, long-running project we sometimes use software you can log in to and follow along.
For a revision to an old, partly hand-drawn file, we first establish which format and which standard we will continue working to. That way a drawing that comes back from us remains recognisable as part of the same project, no matter who else works on it. Even when a project switches from one software package to another, we stick to the same conventions so our output stays consistent.
Frequently asked questions about outsourcing architectural drafting
Hand your architectural 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.