The answer is an unequivocal no! It will cost you money.  

I had a job just recently where my customer has done her own architectural drawings for a two-story extension to the existing house. It was clear to me from the drawings that the lady had only a superficial understanding of construction. There were all sorts of subtle errors and omissions and incompatibility between what she had drawn and how the building would have to be built to conform with construction norms and building code requirements.  

But the extent of her ignorance was such that she couldn’t even identify her own shortcomings as a building designer.  

I tried to change her ways, but the problem that she had spent a whole year getting the development application through the council. (No doubt part of that delay was on account of her dodgy drawings.) Having invested that time, effort and cost in going through council there was no going back on her designs. 

I had no choice but to hike my engineering design fees because of the extra time that I knew I would have to spend getting the engineering to work in the face of these poor and incomplete architectural designs. 

I padded my price out by 50%. As it turns out in retrospect I should have doubled it for the time it took! 

But the cost hikes for this poor lady didn’t stop with me. All the subcontractors understood the same problem that I identified and would have escalated their price. I was recently talking to a concreter about this problem; he bluntly called it “The stupidity tax.” 

The cost for a full set of architectural style drawings for a relatively simple new build or extension is in the order of about 1% of the construction cost. You could blow vastly more than that by doing your own shonky drawings. Having some sort of drafting skills is not enough. So, unless you really know construction DON’T DO YOUR OWN ARCHITECTURAL DRAWINGS!  Don’t pay the stupidity tax! 

Working out who should do your architectural drawings is another important question confronting you. See my separate article, ‘Who should do my architectural drawings?.’