In the drawing office, the need to rent a CAD engineer usually arises on a Wednesday afternoon, halfway through a project that is already under way. A round of changes comes in on a set that seemed finished last month. Two of your own drafters are tied up with a construction package, the third is on holiday and the detail sheet that needs to be ready tomorrow has not even been started.
A moment like that cannot be solved with a vacancy, because that takes months. We fill that gap with drafting capacity that joins in straight away, working entirely remotely from our own office.
Our team consists of drafters with more than ten years of CAD experience, led by Sam, our team leader, who has more than fifteen years of background in architecture. We draft and model, we do not do engineering, and it is precisely that boundary that keeps the collaboration clear. We work nationwide for clients in the Netherlands and charge by the hour or per project at a fixed price. You have no ongoing payroll costs, and if someone is ill or on holiday we replace them so the work carries on.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Who renting a CAD engineer makes sense for
The companies that come to us are similar in their problem, not in their industry. Engineering firms hit a peak where detailing work piles up while the designers have already moved on. Architectural practices have a construction set in which hundreds of sheets repeat the same detailing. Contractors are left with as-built material that has to be properly recorded after handover. Manufacturers want production drawings and assemblies that barely differ per variant, but all of which have to be correct. We also see companies with technical drafting work that does not fit into any of those boxes, but shows the same pattern: a lot of volume, a lot of repetition and too few hands to get through it within the schedule.
The people at the table are usually managers, team leaders and owners, and their question is almost always the same. There is too little time, there are too few drafters, or there is a peak the in-house team cannot handle. What also plays a part is that a permanent appointment does not solve this month's problem. Finding a new drafter, training them and getting them up to speed takes longer than the peak itself.
After that, the payroll cost remains, even when the volume returns to normal. If you are considering whether to rent a CAD engineer in that situation, you are essentially buying lead time without the obligation that continues afterwards. Our team is already in place, so we deploy what the project needs, because our large, flexible team scales with each project. If someone is ill or on holiday, we replace them so production continues and your schedule does not slip.
Drawings and output we deliver when you rent a CAD engineer
The package we take on can be described in concrete terms. In 2D we draw floor plans, elevations, sections, detail sheets, assembly drawings and piping schematics, complete with dimensions, hatching, symbols and title block according to your set-up. In 3D we build models of parts, assemblies and buildings, from which we then derive the sheets. We process as-built documentation into a set that matches the actual situation, even if the source material is partly hand-drawn or poorly printed. Revisions form the fourth stream, and for most clients this runs continuously.
A change in component choice or a shifted grid rarely affects just one sheet, and checking all the sheets that connect to it is exactly the work that gets left undone in-house. We process a round like that sheet by sheet, with a revision marker that matches your document control. Alongside the drawings we deliver the associated output: material schedules that update with the model, blocks and families your own team can reuse afterwards, and files in DXF, DWG, Revit formats or STEP. We deliver in stages. A first batch goes back, your project lead reviews it, we incorporate the comments and continue with the next part.
That rhythm prevents a deviation from only becoming visible in the last sheets. Communication runs through email, phone and regular meetings, every two days or weekly, depending on how urgent the work is. If you rent a CAD engineer for short-term work, you get the same checks from us as on a long-term project, because every sheet passes through at least three review layers before it leaves our environment.
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.
What it costs to rent a CAD engineer and why we bill genuine hours
We charge by the hour or per project at a fixed price, and we decide together with you which form suits best. A defined set with a known number of sheets and a clear standard lends itself to a fixed price, because the work can then be assessed in advance. A revision stream whose size is still changing is better suited to an hourly basis, because a fixed price there would only be possible with a risk surcharge. We only bill genuine working hours. If someone steps away for five minutes to get a coffee, the clock stops, and that rule applies to everyone in our team. We are not in favour of prepaid hours cards or monthly hours subscriptions, because they commit you to volume you may not need. What an hourly basis does require is transparency, which is why we link the hours logged to the sheets we worked on.
That way your project lead can see where the time is going and can adjust before a cost item gets out of hand. Three things keep costs down in practice. First, the quality of the material supplied, because a legible starting point saves searching. Second, the degree of repetition, because that is where we achieve substantial time savings with parametric families. Third, the clarity of the drawing conventions, because a clear standard prevents correction rounds. You have no ongoing payroll costs, and if someone is ill or on holiday we replace them without charging extra for idle time. The intellectual property of everything we produce belongs to you, regardless of the billing method chosen.
From enquiry to the first sheet
The process starts with a conversation. In it we go through what is already there, what the deadline is and which sheets are needed first. Barry, our project manager, is usually the first point of contact for new enquiries, after which Sam takes over the technical side, so you deal with one permanent point of contact. We respond to a new enquiry within 1 to 2 working days.
To get started, we need a few things. The existing drawings that need revising, or the source material we need to build from. The template and layer structure, plus the drawing conventions you use in-house, because we work to your standard rather than our own.
We also need a sample sheet that counts as approved, because that tells us how tight the annotation and detailing need to be. As soon as that is complete, we can begin. If information is missing, we would rather work it out ourselves than call your project lead all day with separate questions, and anything we genuinely cannot deduce we bundle into a single round. We work in our own environment with our own licences, so you do not need to arrange accounts, workstations or extra software.
A short assignment is fine, and if you wish we start with a small first package, so you can judge our speed and accuracy before more volume comes our way. Clients are welcome to visit us, although the work itself is carried out remotely. We sign an NDA on request, even though no client has asked for one so far.
Frequently asked questions about renting a CAD engineer
Let us take on your CAD 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.