Getting house CAD files from engineer who designed it?

Has anyone had trouble getting CAD files from their engineer for a house they designed. I've been told by my engineer its not his policy to give out the CAD files and he refuses to hand them over. Any feedback would be welcome. Thanks

Re: CAD files

Moved from to Mortgages and Buying and Selling Homes

Absent specific agreement to the contrary, the copyright in these files resides with the Engineer; so he is probably within his rights.

The Engineer's policy makes some sense for him. I have seen situations where clients of mine sent out CAD plans to customers and those customers made their own amendments to the drawings. This is a liability mess for the professional: he\she can only stand over amendments made by him\her, and it is too risky to have other versions in circulation..

That said, if you just want\need to be able to print off copies as needed, ask him to send you the drawings in pdf format. These will not be editable (and you need to be careful scaling off them), but at least you can print them as needed.

If you can get him to forward you a PDF version of the drawing (which he should have no problem with) you will then be able to convert them to a Cad file using one of the PDF to DWG converters which you can download for free online.

Unfortunately they wont be perfect and will all be in the one layer but if they were PDFd straight from the Cad drawing you should at least be able to work with it.

Alternatively if he is worried about having his title block on the drawing encase you are about to make changes to the layout etc. just ask him to send you the drawings in Cad with his own title block erased.

I see no reason why he shouldn't send you this drawing digitally TBH as you have paid for the work.