CAD Drafting · Metro Vancouver
CAD drafting services in Vancouver
Most CAD drafting starts from something unreliable: a scanned PDF, a lease exhibit, or a drawing set that stopped matching the building several tenants ago. Ours starts from a measurement of the building as it stands today.
- Layered DWG
- Drawn from ±10mm data
- Commercial & industrial only
Drafting is only as good as its source
A drafting job has two halves that rarely get talked about separately. There is the drawing itself — layers, lineweights, annotation, standards — and there is the question of where the geometry came from. Firms shop hard on the first half and almost never ask about the second.
That is backwards. A beautifully drafted plan built on a bad measurement is a beautifully drafted wrong answer, and the error does not surface until someone is on site with a tape measure wondering why the millwork does not fit. Redrawing is cheap. Rework in the field is not.
We draft from LiDAR. The building is captured at ±10mm with an iGUIDE PLANIX before anyone opens CAD, so every wall, opening and column in the finished drawing sits where the scan found it. The drafting standards are ordinary and unglamorous — that part should be. The measurement underneath is the part worth paying attention to.
What we draft
Commercial and industrial work only. Every drawing below is produced from measured existing conditions.
Floor plans
Dimensioned plans of the space as it currently exists, including the partitions that were never drawn and the ones that were removed without anyone updating the set.
Reflected ceiling plans
Ceiling grid, fixtures, diffusers and devices located from the scan rather than assumed from a standard layout.
Elevations and sections
Interior elevations and sections cut from the same dataset as the plans, so the two cannot disagree with each other.
Site and roof plans
Building footprint, roof geometry and site context where the scope calls for the exterior as well as the interior.
Demolition and existing-conditions sets
The base set a design team works from at the start of a tenant improvement, showing what is actually there before anything is proposed.
Redraws of legacy drawings
Paper or scanned PDF sets rebuilt as live, layered CAD — and verified against a scan, so the redraw fixes the drift instead of preserving it.
How the file arrives
The deliverable list is agreed before the scan, because it changes nothing about the site visit and everything about the drafting effort.
| Format | What it is | Typically used for |
|---|---|---|
| DWG | Layered CAD, organised so layers can be turned off and worked over | Design teams continuing the drawing in AutoCAD |
| Dimensioned, printable plan sheets | Circulation, markup, permit-set backgrounds, the building file | |
| RVT | A Revit model of existing conditions, modelled against the point cloud | Teams designing and coordinating in BIM |
| iGUIDE 3D tour | A navigable capture of the space, linked to the floor plan | Checking a detail without booking another site visit |
Floor plans and the 3D tour usually land in one to two business days. Full CAD and Revit deliverables take about a week for a typical commercial scope.
How a drafting project runs
Scope the drawing list
Which sheets, which level of annotation, which formats, and whose CAD standards the file has to land in. This is settled first because it drives everything after it.
Capture the building
LiDAR capture at ±10mm. Occupied spaces are worked around; the scan does not require the floor to be cleared or the tenant to leave.
Draft against the data
Geometry is drawn from the registered scan, then annotated and layered to the agreed standard. Nothing is placed from memory or from the previous set.
Review and hand off
You get the drawings to look over. Corrections at this stage are part of the job, not a change order.
Working to your CAD standards
Most firms of any size have a layer convention, a titleblock and a set of habits their drawings are expected to follow, whether that is an in-house standard or something closer to the AIA layer guidelines. Tell us what yours is when you book and the file arrives in it.
If you do not have a documented standard — which is common, and not a problem — we deliver in a clean, conventional layer structure that a drafter can pick up without a legend. Either way the goal is the same: the file should be immediately workable by your team, not something they have to reorganise before they can start.
Common questions
Do you draft from drawings we already have, without scanning?
We can, and sometimes it is the right call — for example when a recent, trustworthy set simply needs to be rebuilt as live CAD. But we will tell you what that file is and is not: it inherits whatever the source got wrong. Where accuracy matters, scanning first is the honest answer.
Can you match our layer standard and titleblock?
Yes. Send the standard, a template file, or an example drawing when you book, and the deliverable comes back in that structure rather than in ours.
What does CAD drafting cost?
It depends on area, how many sheet types are in scope, the level of annotation, and whether a Revit model is included. The booking calculator gives an instant estimate for a defined scope rather than a number that changes after the site visit.
Do you do residential drafting?
No. Commercial and industrial only — offices, warehouses, retail, flex space and tenant improvement work across Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley.
How fast can we get drawings?
Floor plans and the 3D tour are typically back in one to two business days after the scan. A full layered CAD set for a typical commercial scope takes about a week. Larger or more detailed scopes take longer, and we say so before you book rather than after.
Keep reading
- As-built drawings — The full existing-conditions service the drafting sits inside.
- Scan to Revit — When the deliverable should be a model rather than a drawing set.
- 3D laser scanning — How the measured data the drafting is built on gets captured.
- For architects — How design teams use a measured base set at the start of a project.
Get drawings built on a real measurement
Book online with an instant estimate, and tell us which sheets and formats your team needs.