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Originally Posted by ElvisMom
Can either of you share how you use cloud sharing and Google Drive specifically to organize the CAD files. One of the things the engineer-types have commented is that there isn't a way to view the files in Google Drive in native format.
I keep thinking Google drive should work. I think there is also an Autodesk cloud solution, but I don't know much about that.
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We setup a folder on our team Google drive account that is shared with the students that do CAD (and anyone else that wants it). Each student has a subfolder where they upload their CAD files and I have a folder as well. From their thier is a master folder with the current CAD. We copy out the main file when we want to work on something and then we copy it back into main folder. I'm normally the person that adds in people's subsystems and keeps the main file up to date. That is how are system is supposed to work, but it does break down on occasion. We also normally end up stopping CAD at some point which is detrimental around week 4 or 5. We have a few students that should be really good at CAD this year and should be able to keep it all updated. This will help when we go to make new sheet metal assemblies during competition season. This year we never even mirrored the parts in CAD (so we only have about 66% of a robot) which is one of the reasons we didn't publish our robot this year. The CAD was so incomplete it wouldn't be helpful to anyone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ttldomination
I'm curious about how you would reply to people who would say that this method fails to engage students at a higher level? That is to say that if a mentor is managing the big picture, it robs students from getting a chance to weigh into major decisions.
For some teams that operate on the principal of "student built; student designed," the aforementioned structure seems to challenge the very foundations of some teams.
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Just because I keep everything running along and coming together doesn't mean the students aren't involved at a high level. I'm not magic and I don't know everything. The students are the ones who do nearly all our prototyping (I rarely touch the tools), so most of the time there is a student sitting next to me while I CAD or if I do it at home I immediately bring it to the people prototyping and get them to tell me how to fix all the things I stupidly ignored about the design. If I made all the high level decisions by myself our robots would be very, very bad.
I completely understand teams that want to be "student built; student designed," and that works for them. In FRC you are able to build your team in many ways and can include whoever you want; which to me is one of the best things about it.