Drafting Services - New York
Drawings for tight lots, old buildings, and long review cycles.
A Brooklyn brownstone gut renovation, a Midtown floor fit-out, and a warehouse conversion outside Buffalo share one problem: somebody has to turn a stack of half-current information into a set the whole team can build from. Drafting Buddies provides CAD drafting, BIM modeling, permit drawings, structural and MEP drafting, shop drawings, and as-built documentation for architects, engineers, contractors, builders, and developers across New York. Our 100+ drafters have delivered 500+ projects since 2014, and applicable tasks can be turned around in 48 hours.
Across the state
New York does not have one kind of drafting. In New York City, sites are tight and neighbors are inches away. Buildings are old, and their plans often are missing or wrong, so an existing-conditions drawing may take as much care as the design itself. Co-op and condo boards frequently review alteration drawings before work can start. Landmarked buildings add another layer of review.
Outside the city, the mix changes. Long Island and Westchester bring suburban houses, additions, and small commercial work. Upstate cities like Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany have older housing stock, mill and industrial buildings to convert, and snow loads that show up in structural details. Ithaca projects often reflect university buildings and hillside sites.
Codes differ, too. New York City follows its own construction codes and files through the Department of Buildings, while the rest of the state generally works under the New York State Uniform Code, with local enforcement. Either way, a drawing set is only useful if every discipline agrees with every other. Coordinating architecture, structure, and MEP, absorbing revisions in the middle of construction, and drawing legibly for contractors are our daily concerns. We prepare drawings for your design professionals. Filing, sealing, and code compliance stay with them, and we cannot guarantee approval.
Tight lots, old or missing plans, co-op and landmark review, and Department of Buildings filing.
Suburban houses, additions, and small commercial work.
Older housing, mill and industrial conversions, and snow loads in the structural details.
University buildings and hillside sites.
City construction codes, filed through the Department of Buildings, from your design professional’s standards.
The rest of the state, with local enforcement. Filing, sealing, and code compliance stay with the architect or engineer of record.
Service Index
Sheet
Description
G-01
Editable plans and details for apartment alterations, storefronts, and small buildings, so teams stop retracing PDFs.
A-01
Floor plans, elevations, and sections for townhouses, brownstones, and commercial interiors, with wall types and details resolved for the builder.
V-01
Massing and interior visuals for co-op boards, design review, and clients who need to see an alteration before approving it.
B-01
Revit models for multifamily, office, and institutional projects, where clashes between ducts, pipes, and beams cost more in the field.
A-02
Sets formatted to your filing requirements, with fast updates when reviewers comment.
S-01
Framing, foundation, and connection details drawn from the engineer's design, including steel and concrete work in mid-rise buildings.
M-01
Duct, riser, and power layouts that fit tight ceiling plenums and shafts in existing buildings.
S-02
Steel, stair, curtain wall, and millwork detail sized for the shop, reducing questions between fabricator and field.
A-03
Field notes, photos, and old plans reconciled into accurate plans for pre-war buildings and undocumented alterations.
C-01
Point clouds modeled into Revit for ornate, irregular, or historic interiors that tape measures miss.
Project Types
Existing-conditions plans come first, then proposed work drawn against them, often including board or landmark submittals.
Ceiling plans, tenant layouts, and MEP coordination against a landlord's base building drive the set.
Repeating units, stacked systems, and separated occupancies reward typical details and strict revision control.
Slabs, docks, equipment, and racking layouts matter more than finishes, and conversions need as-builts.
Phased work in occupied buildings, dense systems, and many consultants call for tightly coordinated sets.
Campus buildings vary in age, so field documentation and clear phasing drawings save summer construction windows.
Fast schedules and repeatable formats; rollout drawings need consistent details across locations.
Coverage
We work remotely, so a firm in Long Island City, a builder in White Plains, and a developer in Rochester get the same process. Files move through shared folders, and questions and markups move by email or call. We do not claim a New York office; we claim a dependable remote team.
New York City clients often need quick turns on tight schedules. Long Island and the Hudson Valley tend toward residential and small commercial work. Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany bring renovation and industrial reuse, while Ithaca and Yonkers add their own campus and mixed-use jobs.
Manhattan
New York City
Brooklyn
New York City
Long Island City
Queens
Merrick
Long Island
Mount Vernon
Westchester
White Plains
Hudson Valley
Yonkers
Westchester
Buffalo
Upstate
Rochester
Upstate
Syracuse
Upstate
Albany
Upstate
Ithaca
Campus and hillside
Why Drafting Buddies
Founded in 2014, we have 100+ drafters and 500+ delivered projects behind us, and that depth matters in a few practical ways.
We can scale up for a submission crunch and back down afterward, without a full-time hire for a short peak.
Architectural, structural, and MEP drafters work in one organization, so a change to a wall reaches the duct that runs through it.
Applicable tasks can turn around in 48 hours. Larger multi-discipline sets take longer, and we confirm a schedule after reviewing your files.
We support revisions and ongoing work long after the first set goes out. Each change is logged so the team sees what moved.
How We Work
Send plans, sketches, surveys, photos, and any review comments, with your deadline and formats.
We confirm deliverables, standards, and what needs field verification before drafting starts.
Work follows your templates in AutoCAD or Revit, with a second-person check on dimensions and cross-sheet consistency.
You mark up, we revise, and each change is logged so the team sees what moved.
DWG, RVT, IFC, or PDF, in the formats agreed, organized for use.
Software
Work follows your templates in AutoCAD or Revit. Final files go out as DWG, RVT, IFC, or PDF, organized for use.
Fit
Outsourcing works best during peaks: a filing deadline, three jobs landing at once, or a backlog of old PDFs. It frees your staff for design, coordination, and client work, and it gives access to Revit and CAD capability you may not want to hire for full time.
Projects with heavy daily design iteration and no drawing-ready information may fit better in-house. We will tell you when a job is not a good fit for remote support.
Questions from New York project teams
We provide 2D CAD drafting, architectural drafting, Revit BIM modeling, construction and permit drawings, structural and MEP drafting, shop drawings, as-built drawings, scan-to-BIM, and 3D modeling. Scope is agreed up front and matched to your project type and file formats.
Next step
If a filing date, a backlog of scans, or an existing building nobody has drawn is slowing a New York project, send the files. We will tell you what it takes and how soon we can turn it. Drafting Buddies works from Austin, Texas, for project teams in New York and across the United States.