Re: CAD on your team?
 

Last year for the first time we used CAD as a major part of the manufacturing.

A couple of problems we ran into were:
1. We weren't as fast as we had hoped and so we slowed down the actual construction of the robot.
2. It fit together so well that if something went wrong it was kind of hard to take apart.

Re: CAD on your team?
 

We train 12-18 students in SolidWorks in the Fall (it s in November this year) and during the build season we have the design students work at FANUC Robotics along with another engineer and I.

The entire robot is drawn using 3-D solid modeling. The components that are being made directly on a CNC machine (called CAD to master) do not have an associated drawing (2-D). Full blown detail drawings, including tolerancing, are completed for all components not being made CAD to master (about 60%). Usually I will do the tolerancing, because it is quite boring and it takes years of experience to do it fast and right; but most of the modeling is completed by the students.

Not one part is made for our robot without a print, but some parts start to be manufactured before all parts are designed. We also perform Finite Element Analysis on critical components (drive train, arms, etc.). Our philosophy is to show the students as many of the elements of a real world design activity as we can. We have been doing it this way for 3 years.

-Paul

Re: CAD on your team?
 

We made our base and sprockets with a CAD/CAM software. We CNCed them later at both our sponsors company and at one of our high schools. Last year was our teams first year having students make parts with CAD.

Re: CAD on your team?
 

Throughout the past couple of years our team has just begun developing an Inventor sub team. Last year was the first year that we were able to create a complete functioning CAD robot and the program really helped our designing process.

Last year our school just started the Project Lead the Way program so we were able to outfit our lab with the software we needed. We also now had more students on hand with knowledge of how to work the software. We started out in the fall downloading files or drawing parts that we were pretty confident we would need. We also had to come up with a way to organize the files so that everyone could access them and know what each part was. We decided that the easiest way to organize the files was to have the whole robot in one folder, using the name to describe what the subsystem, the name of the part, and the dimensions were.

We used Inventor to draw many test ideas that we had and as soon as we had a firm stance on what we wanted the robot to do we began to draw the robot and as we finished assemblies in CAD we would take the drawing files over to manufacturing to have them made. Using the CAD program we were able to design the most compact and best looking robot we had ever had. As Joe said before, if compact is what you are going for, make sure to think about realities of having to service the robot and easy ways of switching out parts.

In addition to making drawings of the parts for the manufacturing team, we also compiled a notebook of all the parts of the robot, assemblies of the subsystems, and explosions of the in order to help us fix the robot and explain how it worked to anyone who was interested. We try not to look at what we are doing as just drawing the parts, we try to emulate the design process in which our sponsor companies and other real world applications would go through to design a product.

Re: CAD on your team?
 

Carl Lewis, an original X-Cat all the way from 1992 (the guy who's always wearing the funky hats on our team) is our CAD specialist. We won the 2001 - AutoDesk Award for Realization for a team at the championship. We get our kids and other mentors to assist as the season goes on but Carl is the main man with the Cad.

Re: CAD on your team?
 

We put the whole bot into CAD, mostly before buildign takes place (small stuff after building that wasn't caught in the CAD model)

As for logistics, it seems to work to have one head CAD person to dole out drawings to other CAD people to send them back to the main person when done so that one person knows what has been drawn and where all drawings are at all times.

Re: CAD on your team?
 

CAD is to be a huge part next year for our team. We did not use it last year because of time constraints and the fact that we were rookies. Our school actually has about 50 computers containing full blown AUTO CAD. Not to mention about 5 or 6 actual CNC machines. So there is no excuse for us not to use it. We have about ten members who have extensive knowledge of these subjects. Not to mention a few great mentors who know drafting and machining lets just say extremely well. In addition our sponsor SUNNY'S enterprises has a full blown manufacturing plant on site. :D Were lucky that is all i can say.

Re: CAD on your team?
 

hmms i hate your team lol, j/k that awesome to have such great resources avaible for your team, wish we could even defrag our pc's (districts security doesnt let us)

Re: CAD on your team?
 

anyone know if they are gonna change the software with the new kits?

Re: CAD on your team?
 

What you may want to do (this applies ot all teams, but yours is a nice example) is find someone who knows CAD or Inventor well and have them teach maybe one or two of the team members how to use the program. Then, the members who know can help teach the members who don't how to use the program. I am the CADster for 617, and currently am in the process of teaching one of the Freshmeat how to do 3D CAD modeling.

And yes, CADing is MOST DEFINETLY a word. I use it often. ~:-)>

Re: CAD on your team?
 

While AutoCAD does prove useful for many teams in designing their robot, the final product had usually deviated so far from the original design that the rendering is useless. So, usually AutoCAD is used to design specialized parts, like a universal joint, so that they can be accurately manufactured. My team, 1418, built our robot from the ground up and only used AutoCAD to make a final rendering of our robot for kicks. It's up to your team how you use it.