Contract CAD & Manufacturing Support

Davis Custom Design provides contract CAD and manufacturing support for shops, fabricators, and small manufacturers that need help moving from a concept, sketch, model, or existing part to production-ready files. The goal is simple: reduce bottlenecks, improve file quality, and help your team get parts out the door — without adding a full-time hire.

Think of it as overflow capacity you can bring in when your own plate is full.

Local, and that matters

Most contract CAD work today gets sent to an overseas marketplace, where you pick a stranger from a list, explain your part through a chat window, and hope the files come back usable.

DCD is based in Martinsville, Indiana, an easy drive from Indianapolis, Greenwood, Mooresville, Plainfield, Franklin, and Bloomington. That means the same time zone, a phone call instead of a 12-hour turnaround on a simple question, and someone who can walk your floor and look at the actual part when a project warrants it. It also means the person drawing your parts understands how they will be cut, bent, and welded, because that is the environment the work comes from.

For shops that have been burned by cheap files that did not account for bend allowance or material thickness, that difference shows up immediately.

Where DCD can help

Support is scoped to defined technical work you can hand off and get back ready to use:

• CAD cleanup and file preparation
• Flat pattern development
• DXF and cut-file preparation
• Sheet metal design and detailing
• Nesting and material optimization
• CNC router, waterjet, and laser workflow support
• CAM and machine-ready file preparation where appropriate
• Prototype-to-production support
• Manufacturing drawings and documentation
• Reverse engineering support
• Process troubleshooting and workflow improvement

Common deliverables

You get clean, production-ready output that drops straight into your workflow: dimensioned manufacturing drawings, DXF and cut files, developed flat patterns with correct bend allowances for your material and tooling, nested sheets, corrected and organized CAD in the formats your team already uses, and documentation clear enough that the next person can pick it up.

If you have file standards, layer conventions, or a title block you use, send them and I will match them.

Best-fit projects

This works best for businesses that occasionally need technical support but do not need a full-time CAD designer, programmer, or process engineer on staff:

• Fabrication, machine, sign, and sheet-metal shops
• Architectural metal companies and product builders
• Manufacturers and maintenance teams working through a backlog
• Small businesses without in-house CAD support

The common thread: you have work to get out, and files, drawings, or programming are the bottleneck.

How it usually starts

Most projects begin with a small, well-defined job — one part, one drawing package, one set of flat patterns. That gives both of us a low-risk way to find out whether the working relationship fits before anything bigger is on the line.

Send what you have: a sketch, a photo, a PDF, a model, or the part itself. I will tell you what I would need, roughly what is involved, and whether it is a fit.

Not a fit for

To keep expectations clear, DCD is built for defined technical support — CAD cleanup, file prep, and manufacturing documentation. It is not a replacement for a full engineering department, does not provide stamped or certified engineering, and does not cover high-liability, safety-critical parts without proper review and controls.

All work is handled through DCD, using DCD’s own tools and time, on customer-provided or non-confidential information.