CAD Services: You Have Your Hopefuls List, Now What?

This is the second in a series of posts detailing how to zero in on a good CAD services provider to whom you can outsource your engineering or architectural drawings with confidence.

In our last post, we listed several forums that can offer up service provider names worth checking out. Now comes the task of evaluating the names and choosing the top three. Here’s the first step.

Message Them

Send each provider an email asking for information. Specifically, ask them:

• If they use your favored CAD platform (AutoCAD, Pro-E, SolidWorks, whatever)
• If they have experience in your branch of engineering/architecture
• If they are interested in your type of work. Be specific, e.g., “We are air-conditioning installers and would like our sketches of duct layouts converted to CAD and superimposed on an architectural plan that we will provide” or “We have sketches of architectural plans and elevations that we need drawn in CAD with coordination between plans and elevations”

Wait for a response to this message. If and when it arrives, there is an incredible amount of information about the service provider that you can derive from it. The next post on the subject will tell you exactly how to mine that information. Be sure to grab it!

It’s a pleasure writing for you —

© 2006 - 2008 The Magnum Group. Reproduction of our content in any form without prior, specific written permission is prohibited.

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CAD Services: Finding the Good Ones

Let’s face it, there are thousands of CAD service providers. How do you find one that’s really good?

We now have proven ways
to garner opinions using incomparable technology. I’m talking about the
Internet. To answer the earlier question, all one has to do is go to
good forums related to architecture and either:

• See if anyone has asked the question already and gotten an answer (in which case your work is done) or, if not
• Register for the forum (most are free), ask the question yourself and wait for an answer.

To save you trouble, just before writing this post we searched the Internet for good engineering and architectural forums. Here’s a ready-made list for you:

Engineering forums:

www.eng-tips.com
www.engineeringforum.org
www.engineersedge.com

Architectural forums:

http://architecture.about.com/mpboards.htm
http://arch.designcommunity.com/
http://www.topix.com/forum/business/architecture
http://construction.com/community/forums.aspx
http://www.contractortalk.com/index.php?s=96b878c7ce987d772ed7d7dd75728bba
http://www.archsociety.com/

To search even further
for a good CAD services provider, you might try Yahoo answers. Just ask
your question; answers usually appear in less than an hour.

Once you have some names,
go through due diligence in evaluating the firms. Check communication
capabilities, speed, accuracy, timeliness, prices, CAD platforms used
and track record.

More on each of these in subsequent posts!

© 2006 - 2008 The Magnum Group. Reproduction of our content in any form without prior, specific written permission is prohibited.

Learn more about our Engineering drafting and architectural drafting services

AutoCAD Drawings from Raster Images: A Power Tip

by R. Kamalathasan, Assistant Manager (Projects), The Magnum Group

When you do a paper to CAD conversion, the input document is often a scanned paper print (also known as a “raster image file”). It is usually in TIFF, JPEG, BMP or PDF format.

You will usually attach the raster image file to a new AutoCAD drawing and start tracing over it. You may sometimes get frustrated if the raster image file is too large: panning, for instance, takes an extended period of time because of the large size of the raster image file.

So what’s a solution to make it easy to work in AutoCAD when raster image files are attached?

The best way is to convert the raster image file to PNG format and then insert it into AutoCAD!

Photoshop will help you to convert the raster image files from any format to PNG. If you don’t have Photoshop there are some free programs that do the job. You can easily find one by Googling.

You will definitely have a better AutoCAD working experience with PNG files since they are smaller and have transparent backgrounds.

Hope this helps!

Technorati Tags: AutoCAD drawings, AutoCAD drafting, raster images, PNG, outsource AutoCAD, CAD services

© 2006 - 2008 The Magnum Group. Reproduction of our content in any form without prior, specific written permission is prohibited.

Learn more about our Engineering drafting and architectural drafting services