Drawing cost calculator
Our engineers release new drawings a year. Most are . An engineering hour costs us about $, loaded.
Typical values to start. Change any box to make them your team’s.
Drawings take 27% of their time, about $1.1M a year. Put end to end, that is every working day from September 24 to the end of the year.
On a calendar of this year's working days, drawings take every day from September 24 to the end of the year: make, September 24 to November 10; check, November 11 to December 3; revise, December 4 to December 31.
2026 · Working days
- Drawing each new part or assembly for release: views, dimensions, tolerances and notes. About 3.9 h a drawing for your mix.Sep 24 to Nov 10
- Reviewing each new drawing before it is released, usually by a second engineer: 2 h a drawing.Nov 11 to Dec 3
- Changing a drawing after release and checking it again: 1.5 revisions a drawing at 1.5 h each.Dec 4 to Dec 31
- Making, checking and revising, added up over every drawing the team releases in a year.
- 12,225 h
- The drawing hours divided by the 1,800 hours an engineer is available in a year, after holidays and leave.
- 6.8
- The year's engineering time divided by the drawings released, so it carries each drawing's later revisions too.
- $730
- An estimate, kept out of every number above: drawing errors that reach the shop, as scrap, rework and delay. See the math.
- $49K to $150K
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Show the mathEvery line of the working, with your numbers in it. Change any assumption, and see where each one comes from.Open
| Item | Line | Working | A year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Make new drawings | 1,500 drawings × 3.9 h each, from 20% simple at 1, 60% typical at 1 and 20% complex at 1 | 5,850 h |
| 2 | Check before release | 1,500 drawings × 1 | 3,000 h |
| 3 | Revise after release2 | 1,500 drawings × 3 revisions × 3 to make and re-check each | 3,375 h |
| Drawing hours | 12,225 h | ||
| Share of the team4 | 12,225 h ÷ (25 engineers × 5 available) | 27% | |
| Engineering time | 12,225 h × 6 | $1,100,250 | |
| 4 | Errors that reach the shop Estimate | 1,500 drawings × 1 × ($3 scrap and remake + $3 engineering and inspection + $3 delay), shown as half to one and a half times that | $49K to $150K |
| 5 | Over-tolerancing Estimate | $ of parts × 1 toleranced tighter than needed × 7 premium | Needs your spend |
- 1Drafter's working figure, from conversations with engineering teams. We found no published figure, so change it to yours.
- 2For scale: engineering changes as a whole take about 30% of engineering work in a German survey (Fricke and others, 2000, cited by Jarratt and others) and 31% of R&D capacity in a Danish one (Langer and others, 2012). This line counts only redrawing and re-checking. Jarratt and others, Langer and others
- 3Drafter's estimate. We found no published figure, so change it to yours.
- 4For scale: surveys put it near a third, 33% of design time (Tech-Clarity, 2017) and 32% of engineers' time at build-to-order firms (Cincom, 2007), both published by or for software vendors. Tech-Clarity, Cincom, as reported
- 52,080 hours, less 8 paid holidays (BLS, 2025), 16 vacation days after five years and 7 sick days (BLS, March 2026), is about 1,830. The Social Security Administration's worked example of a working year is 1,776.5. BLS holidays, BLS leave, SSA
- 6A mechanical engineer's median wage is $104,110 a year, $50.05 an hour (BLS, May 2025). Wages are 69.2% of what professional staff cost in pay and benefits (BLS, June 2026), which makes about $72 an hour. A quarter on top for overhead (desk, software, management) makes $90, Drafter's working figure. BLS wages, BLS pay and benefits
- 7Drafter's working figure, and a conservative one: cost-tolerance studies find machining to IT5 costs about six times IT13, about a quarter more for each grade tighter (Armillotta, 2020). Armillotta
How we work it out
This sizes the problem, not a saving. Everything in the answer is time: the hours your engineers spend on drawings, priced at your hourly cost. What nobody can check from outside is estimated, shown as a range, and kept out of the totals.
The time
- Make
- Drawing each new part or assembly for release: views, dimensions, tolerances and notes. About 3.9 h a drawing for your mix.
- Check
- Reviewing each new drawing before it is released, usually by a second engineer: 2 h a drawing.
- Revise
- Changing a drawing after release and checking it again: 1.5 revisions a drawing at 1.5 h each.
What it adds up to
- Share of their time
- The drawing hours over the hours the whole team is available in a year: 25 engineers at 1,800 hours each, after holidays and leave.
- Cost a year
- The drawing hours at $90 an hour, loaded: pay, benefits and overhead. Engineering time only.
- Engineers, full time
- The drawing hours divided by the 1,800 hours an engineer is available in a year, after holidays and leave.
- Each drawing
- The year's engineering time divided by the drawings released, so it carries each drawing's later revisions too.
- The calendar
- The share laid end to end over this year's working days, Monday to Friday, as if the year's drawing work came all at once. It shows how much, not when.
What is not counted
- Errors that reach the shop
- Drawing errors that reach the shop: scrap and remake, engineering and inspection, and delay, at an estimated share of drawings.
- Over-tolerancing
- Tolerances tighter than a part needs make it cost more to machine. Counted once you give your annual part spend, in the math.
- Where the figures come from
- Pay and working hours from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Social Security Administration. Hours per drawing, checking and error rates are Drafter's working figures, because no published ones exist. Each is footnoted in the math.