Quote:
Originally Posted by Cory
In all seriousness, even if you had a part that did not change at all there are endless ways you could change the design so it's not being reused. You could change the CAM file that generates the G-code to run the machine. You could make trivial dimension changes. You could issue a new drawing revision for some minor callout. You could change radii used on pockets/edges. The list goes on and on.
It's really a silly rule because FIRST is unwilling and probably more importantly unable to outline what qualifies as changing the design enough for them to be OK with it. It's also silly because anything you would re-use exactly as it was from the year before/offseason/etc is most likely a completely trivial part that would gain you no competitive advantage by designing up front.
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I'm entirely in agreement with Cory on this point.
Absent guidance from FIRST, there is no standard for defining a change. If you paint the part differently, is that a design change? Different colour? Different composition? Different number of coats? Different method of application leading to different surface finish? Which functional characteristics are considered and which are neglected? To what degree must a design change be intentional, and/or consequential? What if you intend to make a change (as evidenced by your latest drawings), and then don't make the change—so that the part is now identical to a pre-season revision?
If you go down this road, there is no bright line, and thus there will inherently be inconsistency in interpretation. If FIRST accepts the inconsistency and its consequences, they ought to clearly say so. But if that inconsistency is incompatible with their stated motivations (I believe that it is), then they shouldn't make rules in this fashion. (Inconsistency in the rules adds the potential for conflict, so unless it is counteracted by a significant benefit, it should be avoided.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cory
The rule quite obviously exists to prevent you from designing an entire system of your robot before kickoff and then implementing it immediately, but you really can't design a system that can be used wholesale with no changes, because you have no idea what it needs to do.
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As I see it, FIRST should reconsider its intent: allow teams to design (and prototype) whatever they want before the build season, even if
the design is destined for the final robot. That way there are no issues regarding what individual custom components remained the same through the pre-season and in-season design processes, despite being part of assemblies that were reconfigured during the season.
What's the worst that could happen? Teams could design robots and mechanisms in the hopes of having a suitable game? They could do engineering stuff year-round? Fine with me, and obviously fine with a lot of the more dedicated and more successful teams. Presumably fine with FIRST, too, since they haven't really done anything effective to curb it.
Additionally, the previous years' rules were hopeless from an enforcement standpoint because (in the general case) it is not practical for an official to evaluate all of the possible elements that could have been changed on moderately complex systems. Indeed, in
nearly every case, the officials have no access to the previous designs (whether in schematic or constructed form) at all. The proposal I outlined above doesn't remedy this entirely, but simplifies the task considerably, because it then comes down to a simple question that can be much more clearly understood and answered by the team: "did you fabricate or modify any robot parts before the build season began?" (Granted, that is dependent on a good definition of fabrication/modification, but that's already covered for the most part in the rules.) Instead of the inspector having to evaluate the robot based on the dates of design changes, they evaluate it based on dates of modification. Modification is much more of a momentous event than design revision, and since it is more likely that any given team member will be aware of it, it's harder for them to forget or lie about at inspection. (And perhaps more importantly, if the team member does forget/lie, they're more likely to be called out on it by a fellow team member later on—so violators lose the shield of plausible deniability among the people whose approval they value most.)
Besides, my position is that (in a typical FRC game, rather than universally) an inspector should be giving the teams the benefit of any plausible interpretation within the rules. The teams are not the source of unclear rules, and they should not be penalized for successfully following a reasonable interpretation of those rules. (As a result, inter-event inconsistency sometimes ensues, but it is typically balanced by the fact that the teams are able to play, unburdened by surprise modifications, having complied with the apparent letter of the rules.)