If you are thinking about outsourcing drafting for machine building, the first question is which part your own department keeps. In most cases the thinking stays in-house: the design decisions, the tolerances, the coordination with production and the contact with the customer.
What comes to us is the detailing work. Part drawings taken from an existing model, assemblies that need to be documented properly, revisions to old DWGs and models that someone once left half-finished.
We draft and model, and we explicitly do not do engineering or calculations. We keep that line sharp because you need to know exactly what you are buying. On this page you will find which companies this applies to, how we safeguard quality, what the costs are made up of and how our team differs from a single freelancer or a new permanent hire. We work from our own office, with our own licences, and scale with the volume at hand.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Machine building clients who outsource drafting
Our clients are engineering firms, manufacturers, contractors and architectural practices, and more broadly any company with technical drafting work. The people at the table are managers, team leaders and owners. They come to us with a problem that is almost always the same: there are too few drafters, too little time, or a peak that the in-house department simply cannot absorb. A team leader tells us that two design engineers are completely tied up in a running order while the next order has already been confirmed. An owner notices that documentation is structurally lagging because nobody can find time for it during the week.
The work that gets left behind is rarely the exciting part. It is the drawing that still needs detailing, the change that still has to go into the set, the folder of documents that nobody can fully follow any more. That is exactly what we pick up. Repetition and volume are our territory, and that is also where the gain lies for the client. What we do not do is take over the role of the design engineer. Calculations, material choices and structural advice stay with your own team, because that is where the product knowledge sits.
We work to the drawing conventions and the standard we receive from the client. That means their title block layout, their numbering and their way of dimensioning. This keeps the outsourced set interchangeable with what your own people draw, and nobody has to translate between two styles in the same documentation later on. For whoever manages the file, that saves a great deal of tidying up in the project folder.
Three review layers on outsourced drafting
Outsourcing stands or falls on how much the client has to check themselves. That is why we have built in fixed checks. A drafter produces the work, a second team member checks it, Sam, our team leader, then reviews the technical side and Barry, our project manager, goes over it last before anything goes back. That is at least three layers on top of the drafter, and we keep to that order even when the schedule is tight. In practice this keeps the number of errors to a minimum.
What these checks mainly prevent are the small things that cost a lot of time: a dimension copied incorrectly, a layer that does not match the conventions, a revision mark nobody updated. Deviations like these cost the client more time than they cost us, because they only surface when production or the customer trips over them. We also deliver in stages. The first batch of drawings goes back, your team reviews it, we process the feedback and carry on. If there is a misunderstanding about the drawing conventions, it affects a handful of drawings rather than the entire set.
Experience plays a part in that review. Everyone who works for us has more than ten years of CAD experience, and Sam still works as an engineer himself. As a result he quickly recognises when a supplied drawing is internally inconsistent and flags it rather than copying it blindly. We would rather raise signals like that along the way than at the last drawing in the package.
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 outsourcing drafting in machine building
The work is billed per hour or per project at a fixed price. We decide which suits best together with you, and it depends on how precisely the package can be defined in advance. A series of similar part drawings with a fixed standard lends itself well to a fixed price. A folder of outdated documents, half of which are no longer correct, does not, and hourly billing fits better there. When we work by the hour, we only charge pure working hours. The clock stops as soon as someone walks away for five minutes to get a coffee. What keeps costs down mostly lies at the front end. Complete input, a readable existing set and clear drawing conventions save us searching time, and searching is the most expensive part of outsourced drafting. Repetition helps too: once we have a type of part properly set up, the next variant goes faster.
On top of that, you pay no ongoing salary costs, no workstation and no licences, because we work in our own environment. There is no prepaid hours card or monthly subscription either, so once a peak is over the cost simply stops. We only give an estimate after we have looked at the documents and had a conversation. Quoting figures based on a rough description produces a number that is of no use to you and does not help with your own costing. We would rather look at it first and then tell you what the work realistically requires. We base that estimate on the package that is actually there, not on an average from previous projects. That makes the comparison with your own drafting hours a fairer one.
How we differ from a freelancer or a permanent hire
Hiring a single freelancer looks similar to what we do, but there are practical differences. A freelancer is one person: if he drops out through illness or holiday, the work stops until he is back. With us, we replace someone and the project carries on. With our large, variable team we scale up or down per project, and when something is urgent we add people straight away.
The team is already there, so scaling up does not require a recruitment round. The review process differs too. A self-employed professional delivers his own work, whereas with us a second pair of eyes and Sam always look at it before anything goes back.
The knowledge of the project therefore sits with our team rather than with a single person. Compared with a new permanent employee, the difference is mainly financial and organisational. With us you carry no ongoing salary costs, do not have to set up a workstation and are not left with a half-occupied position after a peak. Onboarding takes little time, because our people have well over ten years of CAD experience and are used to adapting to a client's standard.
What you do give up is daily physical presence. Our work is done entirely remotely from our own office, with contact by email, phone and scheduled meetings. Clients are welcome to visit and we also come to them. For work that needs over-the-shoulder discussion every hour, an in-house drafter makes more sense. For volume and repetition, we are the more practical choice.
Frequently asked questions about outsourcing drafting for machine building
Hand your machine building 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.