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General
No, CADdetails is not a CAD software. We are a leading provider of building product design files for AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction) professionals across North America. Our platform hosts high-quality design files (CAD drawings, BIM models, 3D renderings, and specifications) that design professionals use to specify products in their projects.
We also offer technical file support, advertising services, and intent-driven analytics that deliver valuable insights into your target audience. Learn more about our services here.
A product is a building product or material that has technical design content associated with it, such as CAD drawings, BIM objects, 3D models, and specifications. As part of your plan, you'll receive a set number of products you can list on CADdetails.com.
A project is a practical example of how your building products have been used in real-world applications. By showcasing projects on your CADdetails profile, you can demonstrate to specifiers how your products can be used in their designs.
Yes, CADdetails can help manufacturers of all sizes reach a wide audience of AEC professionals. Our plans are designed to offer flexible solutions to meet the needs of any company, big or small.
All manufacturers who list their products with us receive quarterly product update emails with the latest news about our offerings. You can also check out our Get Spec'd blog for the latest CADdetails news, plus practical tips to help your building products stand out and get specified.
Analytics
You can leverage your CADdetails Analytics data in several impactful way:
- Sales and Business Development: Prioritize outreach to design firms with high intent scores, indicating they are more likely to convert (download or click content). Firms with sustained or increasing engagement offer strong potential for prospecting initiatives. Recognize firms on the leaderboard to confirm ROI and nurture relationships with existing clients.
- Tools: Sales Prospecting Initiatives & CRM systems. Leverage CRMs such as Salesforce or HubSpot to track these firms, segment prospects, and set alerts for changes in intent scores, particularly for those new to the leaderboard.
- Benefits: Targeting firms that are actively engaging with specific product categories can streamline efforts, resulting in higher conversion rates, more efficient lead/account nurturing, and reducing churn for repeat customers.
- Marketing and Advertising: Tailor marketing campaigns based on industry engagement data, geographic insights, and top-performing content categories. Refine messaging and ad placements based on which content resonates most
- Tools: Ad Platforms (e.g., Google Ads, LinkedIn, Facebook Ads) for retargeting high-engagement firms. LinkedIn’s Account-Based Marketing (ABM) features can help narrow down campaigns to specific firms and target specific users.
- Benefits: Focused marketing efforts on the most engaged firms, industries, or locations maximizes ROI on ad spend. The data helps optimize ad campaigns for content types that resonate most, such as CAD, BIM, or 3D files.
- Product Development and Content Strategy: The data on top content categories and high-performing files helps inform product teams about the resources most valued by design firms. They can then prioritize developing similar content types or formats.
- Tools: Content Management Systems (CMS) for adjusting content production in line with demand. This also integrates well with Digital Asset Management (DAM) tools like Prodify.
- Benefits: Producing content that aligns with the interests of key audiences enhances your value and relevance in the marketplace, increasing the likelihood of repeated engagement and brand loyalty by AEC professionals.
The top design firms on your Design Firm Leaderboard are ranked by intent score. Intent scores help identify firms most likely to convert (click or download your content), and are calculated through a proprietary algorithm based on quality, volume, and recency of engagement with your products and related product categories.
- Quality: Conversion events are aggregated by AEC user when they either click on or download your content and/or content in related product categories. This engagement is then aggregated across all relevant listings and projects and scored. The scores are dependent on the volume, specificity, and relevancy of each product category.
- Downloads demonstrate higher intent than clicks.
- Direct engagement with your content is also higher in intent than engagement with competitor products alone, but both are important.
- The competitor content that matches your product categories increases in relevance with its specificity.
- Volume: The number of conversion events performed by users. Intent increases with volume of activity.
- Recency: How recently the user engaged. Over time, if users don’t return, their intent will decrease each week.
We employ a range of methods to ensure that our reporting reflects the most relevant and accurate information.
- Bot Mitigation: All event traffic is carefully analyzed for bot activity, with automated traffic filtered out based on typical browser metadata including specific browser agents, compliance with the robots.txt protocol, blacklists, verified bot IP ranges, and specific activity patterns. Activity evaluation involves ongoing IP monitoring and the testing of factors such as bounce rate, continuous activity, repetition, session metrics, event volumes, and event variety over time. These bot mitigation strategies are regularly evaluated and updated; however, malicious bot attacks are an evolving problem. We aim to stay ahead of that technology to ensure we always deliver the highest quality data. This is an ongoing process, and as we gather more information, historical performance metrics may be adjusted if they were influenced by an IP later identified as malicious. However, most bots are detected and blocked before they can impact client reporting.
- Internal Traffic: All internal traffic, including CADdetails and client activity, is filtered out of all reporting. In certain cases, personal email addresses that are registered on CADdetails or Design Hub with no affiliation with CADdetails or the client company may slip through. In this scenario, please request the specific email(s) to be added to our block list.
- Leaderboard Target Audience Filters: The Design Firm Leaderboard is designed to showcase the AEC target audience most relevant to you. This audience is specifically refined to include only AEC firms based in the USA or Canada. Additionally, student traffic and private projects are excluded, as the leaderboard is focused on a B2B use case.
- Performance Summary: The Performance Summary reflects global engagement with client content, with only bot and internal traffic carefully excluded. This data is crucial for offering a comprehensive overview of the exposure and engagement a client receives on CADdetails.com, as a significant portion of engagement takes place before a user registers or logs on to the site.
Your CADdetails Analytics dashboard pulls data from your profile on CADdetails.com, where AEC professionals can find your products by searching for your company or related keywords. You’ll be able to track impressions, views, and downloads, and see which listings and design firms are engaging most with your content.
Design Hub data provides similar metrics, like views and downloads, but with even deeper insight. It provides contact-level insights on top of firm-level data, allowing you to connect directly with the AEC professionals engaging with your content.
Due to the changing nature of privacy laws, we want to ensure that we’re maintaining the trust of our AEC users while empowering you to better understand the audience engaging with your content (or related content). We provide essential firmographic data, AEC user metadata, and intent-based design firm recommendations to help you refine your prospecting and marketing strategies and nurturing existing customer relationships, all while safeguarding AEC users' personally identifiable information (PII) unless they have explicitly consented to be contacted.
Advertising
An ad bundle is an all-in-one advertising package that puts your brand and products in front of over 750,000 North American AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction) professionals who use CADdetails to specify building products.
After you choose an ad bundle from our Media Kit, you'll work with a dedicated coordinator for your placements, and we'll feature your products across multiple CADdetails channels for maximum exposure.
Architects, engineers, designers, and any other specifiers actively looking for building products to include in their projects.
Our ad bundles give you the opportunity to showcase your products across all of our digital channels, including CADdetails.com, our AEC newsletter, the Design Ideas blog, social media, and targeted eBlasts.
Of course! You decide which products you want to highlight across our channels.
Yes, campaigns can be scheduled around your marketing goals and timelines.
Absolutely! You can provide your images, logos, and copy, or we can help with creative support.
Pricing depends on the package you select. Download our Media Kit for details.
Yes, adjustments can be made to most of our bundles. Our Diamond ad bundle is fully customizable to match your goals.
We provide performance reporting with key metrics like impressions, clicks, and downloads so you can measure engagement and accurately assess the effectiveness of your ads and your investment in one of our ad bundles.
Most campaigns go live within a few weeks after your profile is complete and we receive your creative assets.
Ad Bundles are an add-on service for existing CADdetails clients.
Not a client yet? Learn more about CADdetails here, or book a demo to get started.
Design Hub
Design Hub is a branded extension of your website, hosted by CADdetails and managed by our team of experts with over 25 years of industry experience. It provides AEC professionals with easy access to your design files, making it simpler for them to find, download, and specify your products.
Think of your CADdetails profile as your launchpad where AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction) professionals discover your products during the earliest stages of their design process. Now, combine that reach with Design Hub—your branded destination that keeps specifiers engaged, informed, and ready to specify.
Follow the steps in this guide: How to Add Design Hub to Your Website.
For an example of an integrated Design Hub logo on a manufacturer’s website, take a look at the top banner of Shade Systems’ homepage.
The more traffic you drive to your Design Hub, the more leads you’ll generate. To maximize visibility, consider promoting your Design Hub in the following places:
- Your website
- Social media icons
- Email signatures
- Newsletter features
- Social posts
For best practices on how to promote your Design Hub through each of these channels, check out this blog.
With Design Hub, you gain powerful insights not only into which AEC firms are engaging with your content, but also which individual users are interacting. You can leverage this data to better understand specifier behavior, identify potential firms early in their product research, and nurture them throughout their purchasing journey with personalized, targeted outreach.
Your CADdetails Analytics dashboard pulls data from your profile on CADdetails.com, where AEC professionals can find your products by searching for your company or related keywords. You’ll be able to track impressions, views, and downloads, and see which listings and design firms are engaging most with your content.
Design Hub data provides similar metrics, like views and downloads, but with even deeper insight. It provides contact-level insights on top of firm-level data, allowing you to connect directly with the AEC professionals engaging with your content.
Follow these guidelines for optimal display:
Image Requirements:
- Product Image: 500x500px
- Landing Page Image: 4:3 aspect ratio
Company Description:
- Character Limit: 1000 words
Yes, book a demo with one of our experts to get started.
Technical Member Program
The Technical Member Program (TMP) is designed to help building product manufacturers create, maintain, and optimize their CAD, BIM, 3D, and specification files. Our locally based team ensures your design content meets the latest industry standards and is ready for seamless integration into AEC projects.
By joining TMP, you can confidently entrust your design content to experts who understand both manufacturer needs and AEC professional expectations.
Providing CAD, BIM, 3D, and spec files makes your products more accessible to AEC professionals who rely on them for their design and construction projects. This increases the chances of your products being specified, leading to higher product adoption and improved sales.
We can help you determine the right file formats for your products based on the needs of the AEC professionals you’re targeting. Our team will also work with you to ensure your content is compatible with industry-standard software.
Check out our File Type Cheat Sheet or request a free assessment of your design files to learn more.
Project timelines vary based on the complexity and scope of your content needs. Rather than offering a one-size-fits-all estimate, we take the time to understand your goals and technical requirements before outlining a realistic timeline. Our team works efficiently to deliver high-quality results, while keeping you informed every step of the way.
Absolutely! In addition to content development, we also provide content maintenance solutions. We can update and optimize your existing files to ensure they meet the latest industry standards and are compatible with the software commonly used by AEC professionals. This includes adding or modifying information and improving the quality and useability of your files.
Onboarding & Client Support
To set up your profile, we need a brief outline of the products and projects you'd like to feature. If you have them available, we also recommend you share any of the following files with us:
- Corresponding design documents (.dwg preferred)
- Technical specifications (CSI specifications, testing docs, data sheets)
- Links to brochures or other product-related documents (color sheets, etc.)
- High-resolution product images
- High-resolution company logo
You can send us your files via email (or via Dropbox or WeTransfer for larger file transfers). If you plan on sending files regularly, we can set up a shared folder for long-term use. You can also direct us to a section of your corporate website where we can access the required information.
If you’re looking for a better way to organize and share your digital assets, we recommend you try Prodify, the first-ever file management software built for building product manufacturers.
No, our Onboarding Specialists will handle everything for you! We take care of migrating your files and setting up your profile on CADdetails.com, so you can start showcasing your products to over 750,000 North American AEC professionals right away.
The onboarding process usually takes around 30 days.
Yes. Once your onboarding is complete, you'll be assigned a dedicated Client Success Manager who will be your main point of contact for any support or assistance you need.
Yes, you can update your profile at any time. Please send any updates in Excel format to ensure your product listings remain accurate and up-to-date. If you need support, contact your Client Success Manager or email us at customersupport@caddetails.com.
When you submit your technical files to us, you'll receive your drawings in 5 different formats:
- DWF
- DWG
- DXF
- Printable CAD (GIF)
To make it easier for users, the file titles will indicate that drawings are manufactured. You'll also receive MFG Drawings for each format.
Yes, our Technical Member Program is designed to help you create, maintain, and optimize your CAD, BIM, 3D, and specifications. Our team will ensure they meet the latest industry standards and are ready to be incorporated in AEC projects.
The more detail you provide about your products and company, the more likely users are to download your files and specify your products. A well-rounded profile will lead to higher engagement and better results.
Here are 4 ways you can upgrade your profile:
1. Include a variety of technical files on your profile to increase engagement, such as:
- CAD Drawings (DWG/PDF)
- SketchUp Files
- Revit Files
- Specifications
2. Highlight your favorite projects on your profile to help users visualize your products in real-world applications. Upload at least 25 high-resolution images, along with videos, a list of products used, and key project details such as location, firm/architect, cost, and more. The more information you provide, the greater the impact!
3. Promote your profile by using Sponsored Keywords and by taking advantage of featured product/project positions on CADdetails.com. Learn more about our advertising services here.
4. Enhance your profile with supporting documents, like your company brochure, case studies, videos, photo galleries, and installation guides.
Feel free to reach out if you need help adding any of these resources to your profile!
Pricing
No, there are no hidden fees. Some of our add-on products and services may come at an additional cost. Book a demo with one of our experts to learn more.
Yes, you can add more products and projects to your plan. Reach out to your Client Success Manager to get started.
You can change your plan when your contract renews. If you have immediate concerns, speak to your Client Success Manager and they’ll be happy to help you find a solution that fits your needs.
Referral Program
To qualify, you must must be an active paying customer of CADdetails. Your friend can be from a sister brand or have been a previous CADdetails customer.
You will receive a link to choose an e-gift card within 30 days of your friend's first paid invoice.
As many as you want! There's no limit to the number of referrals you can send out.
Choose from over 2,000+ gift card options, including pre-paid Visa, Amazon, Starbucks, Uber, and more!
You can send a referral using the form above. Upon submission, we will email your friend inviting them to check out CADdetails.