If you are thinking of renting a BIM modeller, you first want to know where our role begins and where it ends. We draft and model, and that is where it stops. We do not do engineering, we do not make calculations, we do not give structural advice and we do not handle permits either.
What we do provide is 2D drafting, 3D modelling where needed, as-built drawings and revisions. It is often high-volume work with a lot of repetition, exactly the kind of work that clogs up a drawing office.
Our team picks it up from our own office, with our own licences and the latest software versions. We work to your drawing conventions and not to a house style of our own. The work goes through at least three review layers before we send anything back. Our large, variable team scales with whatever each project requires. We respond to a new enquiry within 1 to 2 working days, followed by a conversation about the project.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
An as-built file that was half drawn by hand
Firefly supplied us with as-built material in which little was correct. The existing drawings had been printed incorrectly, so the scale was no longer reliable. Part of it had been drawn by hand, scanned and then copied again. The whole thing was hard to read and messy, with no consistent structure. We could have called the client about it every day. We deliberately did not, because it would have held up their work. We laid the drawings side by side, compared dimensions and worked out the discrepancies ourselves.
Where we made an assumption, we noted it and presented it in a partial delivery. That way the client kept control without having us on the phone all the time. The set was eventually delivered neatly, in a structure they could then manage themselves. We take two things from that project into every project that follows. The first is that we never grind to a halt on unclear source material, but do the puzzle work ourselves first. The second is that a partial delivery early in the project is worth more than a perfect delivery at the end.
We have now completed more than twenty projects and hundreds of drawings for Firefly. That scale makes it clear where errors arise in this work, namely in repetition and in sloppy starting points. We started this service last year because a client asked for it, and we have offered it as a regular service ever since. It is exactly this kind of file that makes clients prefer to outsource the work rather than leave it lying around in-house.
The work clients hand over to a BIM modeller
Most of our work is 2D drafting. We produce floor plans, sections, elevations, details and the associated sheet layout in your title block. We also model in 3D when the project requires it, and extract the drawings from the model. As-built drawings form a separate stream, in which we record the situation as built. Revisions are the fourth stream, and they come up with almost every client. In greenhouse construction we mainly draw piping diagrams and installation work.
There is a classic problem there, because AutoCAD does not build components such as valves in a smart way. If you need a 90 valve and a 110 valve, you draw it by hand again every time. We solve that with parametric families, after which the same component is placed in a single action. The material schedule updates along with it, so a change carries through automatically. In that kind of work, this approach saves at least seventy percent of the time. Besides those families, we also build templates or clean up an existing set.
What we do not deliver is just as clear. We do not make calculations, we do not check anything against regulations and we do not act as consultants. No advice on structures or MEP engineering comes out of our team. You determine the design, and we put it on paper at the quality your drawing office is used to. That scope keeps the collaboration simple and avoids discussions about responsibility. For most clients, that is precisely the reason to hand this type of work over to us.
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 set our BIM modellers deliver
The set we send back has to be usable straight away in the next stage of the process. That is why we deliver in the format you work in yourself, not in the format that suits us. That can be DWG, DXF, a Revit format or STEP, depending on who has to work with it next. In practice we handle and deliver almost any common CAD format. For a modelling assignment you get the model plus the drawings extracted from it, so the two always belong together. The families and templates created during the project are included. We briefly explain how the parameters are set up, so your own drafters can carry on with them. That saves you searching later in a library you did not build yourself. Intellectually, everything we make remains your property.
You can therefore pass the set on to a contractor or to another firm. We deliver in stages rather than all at once at the end. Each stage is a moment when you can adjust course before we continue. On larger projects you follow progress in software that you log into yourself. For standalone AutoCAD work we stick to email, because an extra system only gets in the way there. We always work with the latest software versions. If you are on an older version, we agree in advance which version we will deliver in. That prevents a delivery from turning out to be unopenable at the last minute.
CAD standards and layer structure when you rent a BIM modeller
We work to your standards and drawing conventions. We receive them from you at the start of the project. They cover layers, line types, line weights, hatches, naming, symbols and the structure of the title block. The tighter those conventions, the less correction work is needed afterwards. If you have not documented anything, we derive the standards from the existing set.
We always present that interpretation to you, so you know what we are working from. That is not a formality, because a wrongly assumed layer structure costs a whole day of repair work across hundreds of sheets. In old sets we often see that several people have drawn in them over time.
Layers are then named half in Dutch and half in English, and the same line sits in three places. We bring such a set back to a consistent structure, in consultation with you and without tidying up unasked. Cleaning up unasked is risky, because an old structure is sometimes still used elsewhere in the company. So we propose it and you decide. The same goes for families and templates. We adapt them within your system, even if we would set them up differently ourselves.
Our own preference is not what counts here. What we do steer towards is consistency, because a uniform set makes later management easier. Sam, our team leader, keeps an eye on that at every review, and Barry, our project manager, gives it a final check. If you want to see how we handle your standards, give us a small first assignment and judge the result.
Frequently asked questions about renting a BIM modeller
Hand your BIM modelling 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.