Re: What does your team do during the first few days?
 

Right after the kickoff airs we watch it again and then people can ask questions if they dont understand something that someone else does about the game. Then normally once we all understand the game to its full extent, our two mentors return with our kit, we go through everything that is in it and invetory it all....(Dont know how to spell it) Then we go around the room and everyone has to give an idea, no matter how crazy, every idea is considered. This part is meant for like inspiration for the next thing. We then go into groups and come up with a general design as a group, so then we have the designs narrowed down to about 6 or 7. A person from each group presents it, then we all vote on the best designs. We could get 2 or 3, or if we are lucky we all agree on one. But if not we discuss wut could be elaborated on each design, the pros and cons. Usually imbetween all of this we get off the subject of the design and talk about the strategy. We always plan to have a general design and general groups decided for who is going ot work on wut by the end of Sat. We have a head student and mentor for each group. We chose those based on who can be there almost everyday that we have build season meetings. And it is required for everyone to be in a robotic group, (Like drive system, electronics, etc) and a non-robotic group (Fundraising, spirit, Chairmans award, etc) Then on Sun. we are in the auto shop, we all discuss wut each group needs to accomplish and get the design more detailed. Then each group breaks off, works on their part. Getting it drawn out and stuff. Actually, usually sunday, the mentors kind of get distracted because they think up ideas over night and discuss them and all of the engineers are debating and coming up with ideas. I love how excited mentors get, they love this just as much as we do, and that is a GREAT thing. By the end of the weekend we have our design and we start building prototypes on Mon. CAN'T WAIT TILL KICK OFF!!!

BTW

I SECOND THAT! Two weeks is crazy. Wit us changing our design through out the build period (Like changing the frame design four times, every time right after i finish welding the previous, URGGGG) LOL

Yeah, two weeks? we would die. Even with the five weeks we spend prototyping and building we still end up staying up till like 2 in the morning, some do all nighters during tha last week. (Bless everyone that did that one all nighter before the practice comp, they didn't get sleep for 36 hrs) Yep.......I can't do that, i stayed till two and i was still like dead. LOL, i fell asleep in the middle of the pits while everyone was cleaning up. k....Ill stop going off subject now. LOL

Re: What does your team do during the first few days?
 

We're going to do the same as last year: we'll pull a massive all weekender (we meet to depart for the competion at 7:30am on Saturady and go to sleep at 7pm on Sunday). Following the kickoff, we go over to someone's house and dump all of the kit parts onto thier living room rug and start brainstromming. On that weekend, which ends up being an exec meeting after the first 6 hours, we decide on a drive system and what game strategy we want to persue. On Monday we'll inform the rest of the team and finalize from there.

New approach --> !!! No design idea can be presented without coresponding scale drawings in CAD or on graph paper !!!

Our goal is to have the ENTIRE robot on paper before we start. We're hoping that with a clear plan we can build the robot in 1-2 weeks (seriously, we could have built last year's robot in a week had be CADed everything). It will save us time for making spares, we'll be focused and we'll be able to distribute our tasks better.

Our current schedule is: 1 week design. 4 weeks build. 1 week test. [if we can't design it in one week, its too complicated to build in 4, so we leave it for next year :D ]