Behind a search for a technical drafting firm in the Netherlands there is almost always a specific work package that has been sitting untouched for weeks. A pile of revisions to existing DWGs, a set of floor plans from an older project, or a piping diagram that the greenhouse builder still needs to work out.
We take that package over. We draft and model, we do not do engineering, and we keep that distinction sharp. You supply the details and usually the existing drawings, and we build on them in our own environment with our own licences.
The work is done remotely from our office, with the Netherlands as our working area. Our large, variable team scales with whatever needs doing. For a small revision round one drafter is involved, for a peak we add as many drafters as needed. Everyone who drafts for us has more than ten years of CAD experience. If you want to start with a small first assignment to judge our speed, you are welcome to do so. We respond to a new enquiry within 1 to 2 working days.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Parametric work and Revit families at our technical drafting firm
Parametric drafting is the difference between building a component once and redrawing it a hundred times. We build parametric Revit families, smart components that adapt to a new size or a different situation. With a linked material schedule, the schedule adjusts automatically to the component. We see the clearest example of this in greenhouse construction. Companies in that sector often work in AutoCAD, and AutoCAD is not smart at building up components such as valves in piping systems. If a drafter there needs a valve in 90 and in 110, he draws it by hand again every time.
With a smart family it is in place in a single action. On jobs like that it saves at least seventy per cent of the time. We can clean up an existing family library or rebuild it from scratch. Which is the wiser option depends on the state of the library you have. If a library is clogged up with variants nobody dares touch any more, rebuilding is sometimes faster than repairing. We first look at what is there and then tell you what we recommend.
Besides Revit, we use Grasshopper and, to a limited extent, Dynamo and Vault for this type of work. You keep the intellectual property of everything we build, so the families remain yours, even if our collaboration ends. A project lead who is unsure whether parametric working pays off for their set can send us a few existing families. An assessment like that takes little time and usually produces a concrete answer straight away. We look at them and tell you what it would deliver.
Software and formats at a technical drafting firm
Our main packages are Revit, AutoCAD and Rhino. We also use Inventor, Grasshopper and, to a limited extent, Dynamo and Vault. We always run the latest versions, so a file we send back opens on your side without a conversion step. For a technical drafting firm that is not a detail. A set that is two versions behind costs time on the client's side that nobody had planned for. We deliver files in DXF, DWG, the Revit formats and STEP, and in practice in any common CAD format.
We work in our own environment with our own licences, so you do not need to free up a workstation, licence or server space. What we do adopt is your standard. Layer structure, naming, stamps, line weights and drawing conventions are supplied to us and we follow them, even if they differ from how we would set things up ourselves. A revision round on existing DWGs always starts with us opening the supplied set and checking the layer structure. Only when that is right does a drafter carry on. That prevents an error in the source file from carrying through into a hundred subsequent drawings.
Files go back and forth by email. For extensive projects such as greenhouse construction, we offer software in which you can log in and follow the project. For standalone AutoCAD drafting we keep it simple and deliver by email. If you have an existing set in an older format, just send it over. We work out what is going on and tell you what we need to move forward.
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 we deliver as a technical drafting firm in the Netherlands
Most of our work is 2D drafting in AutoCAD. Floor plans, sections, details and diagrams that come back in high numbers, often with a lot of repetition across the variants. We also model in 3D where that makes the work better, usually in Revit and sometimes in Rhino. As-built drawings form a separate stream within our technical drafting firm. At Firefly we were supplied with as-built material in which the existing drawings had been printed incorrectly and partly drawn by hand. Poorly legible, messy, and without a clear source to fall back on. We worked it out ourselves instead of calling the project lead every day, and still delivered it neatly. Revisions are the fourth stream and often the largest in volume. A client sends a set that no longer matches reality, we go through it and draw in the changes.
We have now completed more than twenty projects and delivered hundreds of drawings for Firefly. What you get back is a set in your own standard, in the format you ask for, ready to pass on. We deliver in stages, so after the first partial delivery your team can already review it. We process feedback and then move on to the next part. We deliberately do no engineering, no calculations and no permit work. That keeps the role clear and the lead time short. If there is a set that is half in 2D and half in 3D, we decide per element what we redraw and what we model. We also split a mixed stream of revisions and new drafting work so that no work is duplicated. A first conversation is enough to decide which of these streams fits an enquiry.
Three review layers on every drawing
Every drawing that leaves our office goes through at least three review layers. A drafter draws, a second team member checks that work, then Sam, our team leader, reviews it and finally Barry, our project manager, looks it over. That sounds heavy for a single floor plan, but with hundreds of drawings it is exactly what keeps the number of errors low. In practice the number of errors stays minimal as a result.
The gain lies mainly in errors that would otherwise only surface late. A wrong layer, a stamp that is incorrect, a detail that was changed in variant three but not in variant four. A second pair of eyes spots things like that faster than the drafter who has spent three days on it.
Sam leads the CAD team as team leader and is responsible for the technical side and project guidance. He has more than fifteen years of background in architecture, worked in Iran for seven years, had his own design practice in the Netherlands and still works as an engineer. Combined, the core of our team has around twenty-five years of experience. We keep those reviews in place even when things are busy.
For a deadline that could not slip, our team kept working, evenings and weekends, with days of fourteen to fifteen hours, without skipping the review layers. The work also carried on during a planned holiday of Sam. We only bill productive working hours, so if someone steps away for five minutes for coffee, the clock stops. If you want to see how that review works out on your own material, you can start with a small package.
Frequently asked questions about a technical drafting firm in the Netherlands
Hand your technical 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.