F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Hello everyone,

I am pleased to announce F4 will be hosting a CADathon from July 29th 12pm EST - July 31st 7pm EST.

First we should explain what a CADathon is. Essentially, a CADathon is like a hackathon but with CAD. People/teams are given a short period of time to CAD a specific thing (in this case a robot) ending with a panel of judges selecting a winner.

As for what will go on in ours:
Participants will be split into teams of 2. Teams can be premade with people who know each other or participants can enter by themselves and be assigned a random partner. Partners will be assigned by skill level along with the prerequisite of sharing a common CAD suite. We will try to make sure partners are in the same time zone but that will be more difficult. From there, teams will be put in individual google hangouts groups where they can discuss and collaborate. The teams have 55 hours to CAD a robot from the game reveal. The game reveal will include a CAD model of the field, a short video explaining the game, and a game manual. When they are done, teams must create a high quality render of their robot and send the F4 crew their .STEP file. If teams do not submit both a render and .STEP file by the end time, they will be disqualified. Once done, the files will be inspected to make sure they adhere to the game rules. At 8pm EST on July 31st, a special F4 CADathon show will go live. First, each team will come on and explain their robots to the audience. Then, a panel of 3 special guest judges will judge each robot on 4 categories. Strategic design, model detail, buildability, and looks. The judges will then roughly figure out how many points the robot can potentially score. The winner will then be determined based on all of those factors. Each member of the winning team will receive a real prize which will be shipped to them and be themed based on the game.

The only prerequisite to join is that you are willing to spend time doing it. You also need to at least have access to some CAD software. You can be any age (This is not limited to students) and we encourage everyone from newbies to the most advanced CADers to put their skills to the test. If you are interested please sign up here.

http://goo.gl/forms/iCFmI72ZvGtZaSLo2

We will be releasing a game hint this Sunday which should confuse most of you and maybe clue one of you guys in. We hope to see everyone there as it looks like its going to be a lot of fun.

Good Luck!

- Sam

We are not affiliated with KohKohPuffs CADathon from last year. However, we have permission from him and he plans on participating.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

If I wasn't on the GDC I'd absolutely love to participate! I encourage all of you to take this oppertunity as I have only recently gotten into CAD and am pretty novice, but I think this game and working with others will really help hone your skills regardless of experiency level! Excited to see what comes of this!

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

I just signed up, but I really don't know how available I'll be that weekend. I'll do everything I can, but I won't be able to dedicate the whole weekend to it. If there are others who are just looking at this as a learning experience, and aren't as worried about winning, I don't mind being placed with them.

Also, are there any requirements on using files that have already been made/designed/downloaded?

Thanks so much for making this! It seems really exciting, and I can't wait to compete.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

We will make sure to get you with a compatible partner.

We are still writing the manual so this is not final. But currently we are allowing all CAD files to be used as long as they are publicly available.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Although I wont be able to participate this year due to starting my new job, I hope that this is successful enough to run again next year so I can compete then. I'll be sure to follow as much of this as I can next weekend. This sounds like a lot of fun.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Update 1:

Thanks everyone so far for the support. We already have a few teams signed up and are looking forward to see more.

To start a few clarifications.

1. Only a single member of each team will be presenting your design on the show. Please decide this beforehand if you are a pre made team and early on if you are on a randomly assigned team. This member will be added to our teamspeak server.

2. If both members of a team have issues rendering due to PC issues I will help. However all needed files will need to be sent to me at 6pm. So, you will be losing an hour. I will help with renders in Solidworks and Inventor. Sorry no Creo support.

3. We would like to clarify. This is not only for students although F4 is a student run organization this event will not be limited to students. Anyone from the age of 0-116 is allowed to participate.

We are also excited to announce 2/3 of the judges. The first Judge is Andy Baker (Woodie Flowers award winner, lead mentor of team 3940 Cybertooth and president and owner of Andymark). The second judge is Adam Heard (Lead mentor of team 973 The Greybots, Woodie Flowers Finalist award winner and creator of the RAMP series of FRC based CAD tutorials).

Thanks everyone! We are working hard to make sure this is a great event.

Agreed. I'd love to participate but I'm currently on vacation :(

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Before I launch a team to help train some of my newer students I have a few questions on details.

Is there a deadline to register?

Is there a cap on members of a team? I have 3 FRC teams in our facility but no idea what the interest level will be during the summer months.

What mode of communication will be required for the team to communicate through? Will you open the CAD model on the screen and have that one member speak about it via teamspeak?

Lastly, will everything game related be posted here or sent via email?

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

The deadline to register is going to be 7/28 (the day before the event)

There is a 2 person cap on the teams. However you can make as many teams as you would like. If you are using this for training purposes a good idea may be to launch a few teams of newer members and help all of them out but not formally be a member of any of them.

All participants of the CADathon will be added to our slack chat as guests. We have not yet set the channel up but will be doing so very shortly. Once thats done the majority of communication will be done there with only major updates being put here.

Lastly I am not too sure if I will be showing the render/s on the stream or the CAD file. It really depends on whether I get my ram back. (Currently I am running only 8gbs instead of 32gbs).

Thanks for your interest.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

I'd love to involve my team in this. It would be great practice for the 2017 FRC season. However, most of our members dont know how to CAD at all, but I would like to involve them in the design process for practice purposes. A lot know sketch up but I'm not sure if that program would be permissible for the competition given issues with .STEP conversion.

Is there penalties for communication of ideas between people that are participating and not participating? Or would it be best to divide the team up and throw them into competition and see how they fare

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Well, due to constraints I am going to say no to using Sketchup. Its a different beast then using something something like Solidworks, PTC Creo, or Inventor. If you are any members of your team want to learn Solidworks there are resources available. I usually tell people to first watch the 1114 Solidworks series and then move on to 973 RAMP. If anyone is having trouble I am sure someone from F4 or myself would be happy to assist. I or someone else from F4 can even video chat you and your team and teach the basics if you would like. Ill also be around during the CADathon and will be happy to answer questions related to using Solidoworks. If your team does not have licenses for Solidworks the students can still get Inventor but, I can not assist. We have members that use Inventor but there are less of them and all of them are either participating in the event or will be busy.

As for penalties we are discussing this internally. We think we are going to disallow it under the honor system that teams do not communicate ideas. Teaching from a non team member is one thing but competitors should be separated as to keep the playing field somewhat level.

Hope this helps. If you have any questions feel free to ask.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Hey sorry for the delay but here is the game hint.

#smitihatesbears

If you figured out the game in anyway keep it to yourself for now. But, congrats.

See everyone later this week for the full unveiling.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

I'd like to participate, but I'm not sure I'll have access to the only computer of mine that can do CAD. Also, I'm not currently a member of an FRC team, and I noticed that the sign up asks for a team number. Could I just put in "00000"(no team)? Or do I need to be on a team?

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

0000 would work. Also, please don't sign up until you know whether you will have access atleast for a quater the time. A dropout will cause issues. Applications will close the day before the event so you have until then.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

How does separating the teams level the playing field?

In my experience collaboration makes everybody involved better which is the great thing about all the Ri3D-esque groups. If the goal of F4 is to connect people, and your CADithon's goal is to help people become better at CAD it seems counter to both of these goals to restrict collaboration.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

To add on, the best engineers and teams "borrow from the best and invent the rest" Collaboration is the KEY to innovation.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

I do see your point. However, this is a competition. If everyone was to collaborate a lot of the robots would start to look the same and in my opinion less would be learned. By separating people in small groups and restricting collaboration it will create a bunch of different robot designs and strategies which will be fun to reflect on at the end of the event.

Collaboration would also be unfair if not all teams collaborated. All in all I think its just better to keep everyone separate.

However, there are teams of 2 people each. I am sure there will be plenty of collaboration between the 2 designers which is especially cool for the teams who do not already know each other.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Keeping groups separate does level the playing field IMO. If everybody collaborated and one group in a team of 30 found a loophole in the rules, then it could end up that five or six teams all use the same robot.
F4 is hosting a competition here, there has to be separated teams. If the only goal was learning, then they would host a webinar or somesuch. honestly that's not a bad idea for the future: a collaborative robot for a made up game.
I don't recall Ri3D collaborating too much. Besides, the goal of Ri3D is to help people learn, so making the same robot would be pointless.

EDIT: On the topic of fairness, if 6 teams collaborate on strategy and design, they will probably have a better shot than a single team working alone.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

FIRST is hosting a competition here, there has to be separated teams.

God forbid there be collaboration. We may see twins, triplets, or HUNDREDS of the same robots.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

This is a 3 day creativity event. Its not a 6+ week FRC season. The point is not for a team to have the best robot but is for teams to try out stuff they have never done, learn how to CAD better, and have fun.

Asids idea of a single collaborative robot with a ton of people for a game like ours would be cool and we will explore the possibility for a different event.

Thanks for all your feedback.

Lastly I do not know about you but I am not the biggest fan of duplicate robots. And.. if FIRST became more like VEX where a lot of people copied designs I would probably leave the program.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Maybe they could learn more when they have ideas from their friends and can improve on ideas.
If this is practice for the real season and real life, wouldn't it be fantastic to teach them what actually goes on? Teach them that you learn the most from collaborating on ideas and making something great?

No one can truly learn without collaboration.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

If they are trying to learn to CAD better, is not allowing them to talk to other people CADing in the competition really going to fuel their knowledge? I think especially because it is a learning experience, participants should have the utmost desire to learn and teach each other during the 3 days.

IIRC you said there will be a Slack channel for competitors. It seems to me this would be a PERFECT avenue for participants to gauge ideas, feasibility of design, and ask for help. I don't see how that would take away from anything here. Who cares if everyone comes out with similar robots- if they're all individually designed, does it not fulfill the goal of getting more exposure to CAD?

Sending assemblies and full on collaboration/copying designs IS potentially detrimental to your goal, but communication and bouncing ideas off each other isn't.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

We will have people answering CAD questions during the event for people who need help. If other competitors want to answer questions relating CAD more power to them.

In terms of talking about feasibility about designs we think the Judges on the final day are much more suited to talk about that.

If you have any more questions if we could talk within PM's it would be great. That way we can keep this thread more free for future announcements.

Speaking of which. I probably should announce our third judge. Our final judge is Devin Castellucci (Robochair) from team 1678. Looks like we will have a very qualified judging panel and I am sure some very valuable design feedback will be received.

Stay tuned for future announcements.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

All team members who have signed up so far have been invited to the Slack. We did have 1 bounced email so if you signed up before I posted this that is you. Please PM me and sort that out.

We also had 2 people sign up as teams without a second member. If that is you please try to get your second member to register. Its also worth mentioning registration closes tomorrow at midnight est.

We have 10 full and complete teams which is above what we were expecting so that is awesome!

The manual and field are pretty much done. We are editing and rendering now.

Anyway we look forward to seeing everyone! Get on Slack ASAP as that is where we plan on announcing stuff. If you are not there then you do not get the announcements.

Lets make this a great event!

- Sam

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Wait, can I still sign up? I thought the deadline was tomorrow...

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Yes you have until 11:59pm est tomorrow 7/28

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

OK, good! :) I just submitted a forum. :cool:

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

You can expect 3-4 more teams tonight to register during our team meeting. I will organize some more experienced students to work with some inexperienced members.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Awesome! When registering make sure to number the teams or give them different names so we know who is paired with who.

Just a reminder to everyone. You have 6 more hours to register. We have way more people then we were expecting now so, we are not going to allow any exceptions.

Right now we have 3 people who created CADathon teams but do not have a partner. Your partner needs to register in the next 6 hours or your team is not going to be accepted and you will either be placed as a 3rd person of another team or not at all. The teams awaiting a second member are "The Cool CADs", "Lower Merion Robotics" and "BadgerBOTS". If you created 1 of those teams please get a second member.

We are also awaiting people joining the slack chat. We have 27 people in the slack chat but 39 registered people. If you are not in the chat yet get in there now. We will purposely be only releasing the manual there for the first day. Being in the chat is really important to making sure we can make everything run smoothly. If you have not received an invite please PM me an alternate email address.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Registration has come to a close!

It looks like we are ending with 23 teams. 3 of them are teams of 3 (people with little to no CAD experience were added on as a third person).

Here is the team list:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

And... here is the rubric judges will use: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

The manual will be released tomorrow on Slack at 12pm est and and 12am est Saturday here.

Overall we are amazed by the size and excited to see the designs. Should be a blast!

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Hello. Just saw this and missed the deadline to sign up. Is it too late to participate?

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Yes it is. Sorry. We will release the Manual and Field CAD here tonight at 11:59est so, you can still use the game as practice if you like.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Okay. Could you possibly still add me to the slack?

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Sure. PM me your email.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Done. Thanks!

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Hello! The CADathon competitors have had the game since noon today but it is time everyone else sees it.

Without further adieu here is the game reveal video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZPJ...ature=youtu.be

Here is a link to the manual and field CAD: https://drive.google.com/folderview?...&usp=sha ring

As stated earlier in the thread all teams will present their robots live Sunday at 8pm est and then get judged by Andy Baker, Adam Heard, and Devin Castellucci. We hope to see everyone there!

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Yikes, G5 is brutal.

What exactly does this mean? Also G5 and G6 are effectively are the opposite of what FRC does now.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

I think some people might just be a little tired of these safety rules in FRC.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

I see no rules against launching game components. I predict last second polar bear tosser.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

There is no rules against launching polar bears or icebergs. I believe some teams are already designing shooters. A last second polar bear tosser is totally viable and pretty cool. The icebergs on the other hand do not shoot well. A team actually prototyped and tested a linear punch and wheeled shooter. Finding that the icebergs just caught air straight away.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Whoever made the field CAD must've had a lot of time on their hands or they forgot about the mirror function when adding the foam balls in the field. There are 8,127 individual balls in that pit. It is hogging a lot of my resources to render the field when I rotate it. Can anybody put an edited version out please?

~W. Stowe

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Welp I thought I fixed that. Apparently stuff like that does not translate going from .Sldasm to .STEP. I added a folder in the shared drive folder that contains all the native Solidworks files and it should have no balls in the pit.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Alrighty, some feedback on this CADathon! Generally, I think this is awesome and it successfully helped introduce some newer students on my team and other teams to what to expect week 1 for next season. It probably is the best way to hit the ground running. I saw at least 4-5 teams from NC and I would like to do this again with more students and hopefully more teams next run if there is another event in the winter.

I will break down some pros and cons I saw over the last 3 days. I truly believe there are more pros than cons to the first run through here.

PROS -
-The game was different and the objectives/rules were crystal clear.
-The challenge was easily presented and very possible to do in the given time frame
-Sam, your responses were quick and responsive the entire time. This was important and you followed through.
-Allowing the teams to communicate was a massive plus.
-This was perfectly set up to introduce new people to robot design even if they had minimal CAD experience.
-The judges were the right people for the job and this drew my students into participating.
-This game choice effectively challenged the students to think about COG and drive train capabilities. Most of the robots we saw could honestly not get into or out of the ocean without tipping. This is a very important lesson!
-I know that the teams I had participating can now more quickly model a working drive system and complete accurate concept sketches.
-I had two students who had never built a robot in CAD each turn in a nearly complete robot design with their veteran partners - a very effective first try at this!
-The team that won truly had what I thought was one of the best looking robot of the bunch and had the most completed features. Impressive for 3 days!

CONS - Mostly little stuff that could make a better experience.

-Allow the judges to hear what the contestants have to say about their design (their description) or at least let them submit a small essay. This is how FRC works at competition and I feel the judges did not understand many of the concepts the teams presented. This would also allow easier judging scrutiny, a better understanding of each design, elimination of the teamspeak confusion, and present a better chance for student learning. More interaction is always better and I think it would make it easier on you to host!
-I give a lot of slack and understanding here because of the computer issues but remember, these kids worked for 3 days on this. The broadcast was very long and only 4-5 teams heard anything from the judges they wanted to hear from. The scores should be presented at the beginning to allow the students to know how they did and make the trip home if they need to. My teams waited from 8-9:30pm to never find out how we did plus we had been at it since 9am that same day. Some students were fairly disappointed at the end to not hear a lot about their designs if at all after those 3 days at the grind stone.
-Rule clarification on how many renders are allowed, many teams thought only one rendered photo was allowed so that is all they submitted!
-Any team who did not submit CAD for a CADathon should not be able to place. A team who submitted only a photo should not be able to place and best all of the teams who did indeed submit a cad model. Not to discredit any team of course because their renderings did look like a solid robot design, but you could not see at all what was inside the models. Ranking means little in the competition like this but students do pride themselves after a long haul.
-Better means to upload or a longer period allowed to upload the models and renderings. That was rough but also encourages the teams to submit earlier at the same time.
-Show all of the photos of the robots so we know which robot the judges are speaking about. (I think you were doing that but then technology failed)
-Condense the rules down to apply more to the CADathon. Some rules the teams intended to follow for fear they would be disqualified IE they took it more seriously than they should have.

All in all, for the first shot at this it was undoubtedly a success! Props for coming up with this.

Robbie Hoyler

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

\

Agreed on most of the cons (as a judge).

Making the submission deadline 24 hours before the airing of the show would help alleviate most of the problems.

I think Sperkowsky did a pretty good job of putting this all together solo.

It's a tough thing to run quickly and fairly, and I think Sperkowsky learned a good deal from this and will be able to put a much better one on next time.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Out of curiosity, which team # won? I wasn't able to watch the livestream.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

I think it was team 23. I had a hard time hearing the stream at the end and it was time to make the drive back home.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Thanks for all the feedback. I totally agree with everything you said and will definitely work to making this a better experience for teams.

I am really sorry for the technical issues. It really just was unfortunate for everyone involved.

Now for the scores. Originally the judges agreed to not release rank for teams below 3 only saying the score. But... With all of the teams not being presented on stream I think it does make sense to release scoring. I am going to communicate with all of the judges and see what they are comfortable in releasing.

The winning entry was team 23. Team 23 really hit this challenge out of the park. Not only did they win. They also submitted their design before any other team.
Team 23 Album: http://imgur.com/a/ykonR)

Here is an album of all of the renders in the end we have 14 teams who submitted a robot
http://imgur.com/a/2M0AR

Overall I would say that this event was a success in a lot of ways. Teams had fun and a lot of people learned how to CAD better. The presentation/scoring side of things was definitely the part the F4 team and myself will definitely evaluate and do better next time.

Speaking of next time... We are discussing dates around Christmas break before kickoff. So, stay tuned for more information on that.

Thanks so much to the judges and all the competitors for making this event happen.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

As a participant, I would like to say to Sperkowsky, you did an outstanding job putting this all together. It did help those of us who did not have a lot of CAD experience learn a lot. Congratulations to Team 23 on a great win. However, my team was not in the top 3, but we had an entertaining presentation. :D So I think we won Chairman's in the competition. So I guess that moved us up in the rankings. :D Only kidding! Thanks again for a great weekend competition! :)

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

Are the Comments/Feedback going to be released for the teams to read what the judges had to say about there design.

Re: F4 - CADathon 2016
 

2/3 judges have ok'ed releasing the scores. I still have not heard from 1. I'll release them as soon as I get the ok from him.

Soeey for the wait.