Outsource CAD Drafting and BIM Services for Solar Projects

CAD drafting and BIM modeling are essential to every solar project but rarely valued as strategic work. Your senior engineers should be reviewing structural analysis, coordinating with AHJs, and solving complex design problems, not producing detail drawings or updating Revit families. RIH Engineering delivers outsource CAD drafting services and BIM modeling as a dedicated drafting partner for US solar EPCs, installers, and developers. Our drafters produce AutoCAD 2D drawings, Revit BIM models, 3D coordination drawings, and as-built documentation to your standards and templates.

What you get

• AutoCAD 2D drafting for site plans, roof plans, elevation drawings, and equipment location drawings
• Revit BIM modeling for solar and balance-of-system components in 3D
• 3D coordination drawings for complex commercial and industrial installations
• Detail drawings including attachment details, penetration flashing, and equipment mounting
• As-built drawings updated from field redlines after installation
• Rendering-quality drawings suitable for customer presentations and marketing materials
• Revision management with clear version control and layer standards per your requirements
• CAD standards enforcement to your organization's specific templates and conventions

What we handle for you

CAD drafting is skilled labor that follows repeatable patterns. A good drafter can produce 2 to 4 permit-quality drawing sets per day if they focus exclusively on drafting. Your senior engineers, splitting their time between drafting and higher-value work, produce a fraction of that while sacrificing focus on the work only they can do.

We take CAD drafting off your plate. You send us the source data (design documentation, field measurements, redlines). We come back with clean, standards-compliant drawings formatted to your templates, ready for review, permit submission, or construction handoff.

The cost of doing this in-house

Solar companies that keep CAD drafting in-house typically pay $80,000 to $130,000 per year fully loaded for a US-based CAD drafter, before benefits and overhead. Companies that outsource CAD drafting to a specialized team access equivalent (or better) drafting quality at a fraction of the cost, with scalable capacity that grows and contracts with pipeline demand.

The bigger cost is opportunity cost: every hour your senior engineers spend in AutoCAD is an hour not spent on customer engineering conversations, technical review, or business development. On a $100,000-per-year loaded engineer, that hour costs $50. Multiplied across a year of drafting work, the opportunity cost dwarfs the direct drafting cost.

Why RIH Engineering is safe to try

Send us one drafting task. We deliver in 24 to 72 hours depending on complexity. You compare against what your in-house drafter would produce. If quality doesn't meet your standards, we adjust to your templates and conventions until it does. No long-term commitment.

Our drafters are trained on multiple CAD and BIM platforms, follow structured layer and naming conventions, and adapt to client-specific templates from day one. We've produced drafting deliverables for solar EPCs, installers, structural engineers, and MEP consultants across the US.

Our process

1. You send us source data (design documentation, field measurements, redlines, or existing drawings to update)
2. Our drafter reviews your CAD standards and template requirements (layers, naming conventions, title block, plot styles)
3. Drawings drafted in AutoCAD 2D or modeled in Revit BIM per your requirements
4. Detail drawings, sections, and elevations added as required
5. Rendering and 3D coordination prepared for complex projects
6. Drawings reviewed against your template and standard, then packaged for delivery
7. Deliverables sent, typically within 24 to 72 hours for straightforward drafting; longer for complex BIM models

Tools and standards

Our CAD and BIM team works in AutoCAD (full LT and AutoCAD Electrical), Revit (Architecture, Structure, MEP), Navisworks for coordination, SketchUp, and Tekla Structures for structural steel modeling. We support drafting standards across CAD platforms.

Client-preferred tools: Our team can be trained to use the tool preferred by the client. If your workflow depends on a specific platform, template, or drafting standard, we adapt to it rather than force you into ours.