When you have us turn a 2D drawing into a 3D model, a permanent team works on it rather than a changing line-up of individual contractors. Barry, our project manager, is your first point of contact for a new request and goes through the project with you. Sam, our team leader, then takes on the technical side, divides the work and keeps everything on track.
With more than fifteen years of background in architecture, he worked in Iran for seven years, ran his own design practice in the Netherlands and still works as an engineer.
Under him, our drafters produce the drawings and models, all of them with more than ten years of CAD experience. We put as many people on the job as the project needs, because our large, variable team scales with each project. The work is done remotely from our own office, using our own licences, for clients throughout the Netherlands. You are welcome to visit, but it is not necessary. We do the drafting and modelling, while the engineering stays with you. We respond to a new request within 1 to 2 working days.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Who has a 2D drawing turned into a 3D model, and why
The clients who come to us for this are engineering firms, architectural practices, contractors and manufacturers, and more broadly any business with a lot of technical drafting work. The people at the table are managers, team leaders and owners, in other words the people who keep an eye on planning and staffing. The problem they bring is nearly always the same: too little time, too few drafters, or a peak their own team cannot absorb. At an engineering firm it is often a piping diagram or an installation drawing that needs a model to go with it.
An architectural practice has a building design that started out as flat drawings and now has to continue as a model. Contractors come to us with an as-built file in which the existing situation has been partly marked up by hand. Manufacturers have series of part drawings that each need a model before production can work with them. What these situations have in common is volume. It is rarely about a single drawing and almost always about a series. That is exactly what makes it suitable for outsourcing, because repetitive work hands over well as long as the agreements are clear.
A client asked us for it last year, so we started this service and have offered it as a standard service ever since. We have now completed more than twenty projects and hundreds of drawings for Firefly. That work is full of the same patterns we see here. What comes up in one sector, we often recognise one to one in another. You keep the design decisions and the client contact, and we take over the drafting and modelling work.
From 3D model to derived working drawings
What you get back depends on what the model is for. In most cases we deliver a model in Revit, Rhino or Inventor, plus the drawings that follow from it. These are floor plans, elevations, sections, detail sheets, part drawings and assemblies. Material schedules and bills of materials come straight from the model, so a change to a component carries through to the schedule. For building work we also produce as-built models based on the material you supply. Where a revision round is needed we process it and keep track of which sheets change as a result.
We agree the level of detail in advance. A model that is only used for coordination and visualisation is built lighter than a model that production drawings are generated from. Refining afterwards always takes more time than making that choice up front, so we push for it in the first conversation. Where the same element keeps recurring, we build a parametric Revit family, a smart component that adapts to a different size. That way a variant is in place in a single action instead of a drafter drawing it again. We deliver in Revit formats, DWG, DXF or STEP, and in practice in any common CAD format.
We follow the layer structure, naming and title blocks your drafting team already uses. If there is no such convention, we propose a set-up and submit it to you first. That way nobody has to rework the model afterwards to use it in their own environment. We do not do calculations, structural checks or permit documents, because our work stops at drafting and modelling.
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.
Pure working hours or a fixed project price
We charge by the hour or per project at a fixed price, and we decide together which option fits. A fixed project price works well when the scope is clear, for example a defined set of part drawings where we can estimate in advance how much modelling is involved. If the scope is not yet clear, for instance because the quality of the source drawings varies, we work on an hourly basis and keep you informed of progress. We only charge pure working hours. If someone steps away for five minutes to get a coffee, the clock stops. Discussions that move the project forward count, but we try to prevent waiting time and internal puzzling over unclear source files rather than invoice for them. We do not work with prepaid hour bundles or a monthly hours subscription, so nothing keeps running while the project is on hold.
What keeps costs down most in practice is a complete set of input. Clear source drawings, a sample drawing and your drawing conventions save hours that would otherwise go into investigation. A decision on the level of detail also helps, because a model that is built too heavy costs time nobody sees back. Repetition lowers costs as well, because we build a smart component once and then use it everywhere. In work such as greenhouse construction, that saves at least seventy per cent of the time on the element in question. You also pay no ongoing payroll costs, because the invoicing stops as soon as the project is finished. We only make an estimate once we have seen the source material, because only then does it mean anything.
Getting started with a first 3D model
Enough information means a green light for us. In concrete terms, that means the source drawings, an idea of the required level of detail and your drawing conventions. A recent sample drawing and the template you use immediately give us the layer structure, line types and title block. If there is no standard, we propose a workable set-up and submit it to you for approval first.
The process starts with a conversation in which we go through the project, set the schedule and agree how often we will talk. That rhythm varies per client, from a check-in every two days to once a week.
We then produce a limited first part, for example one section of a building or a single product family. You review it, give feedback, and only then does our team move on to the full volume. A short assignment is fine, and a small first job is often the most sensible way to judge our speed and accuracy. If it does not work for you, it ends there with no obligation. If it does, we scale up with extra drafters without any recruitment process.
Files go back and forth by email, and on larger projects we work with software you can log into to follow progress. Everything we make remains your intellectual property. We have not signed a non-disclosure agreement so far because clients have not asked for one, but we are open to an NDA. We respond to a new request within 1 to 2 working days, by phone or via the contact form.
Frequently asked questions about turning a 2D drawing into a 3D model
Let us turn your 2D drawings into 3D models
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.