Quote:
Originally Posted by AquaMorph
Looking at the robots for ideas and proof of concept is great but having the CAD files and being able to assemble the robot like it is a kit is too far in my opinion.
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But if every team who otherwise wouldn't have been competitive now have identical Ri3D clones (and they won't--many teams who seek to ape those designs, even with the CAD right in front of them, won't pull it off), then that's the new baseline, and the teams that don't do that will still be that much better, and will still rise to the top.
I'll admit, our robot looks rather Ri3Dish. That's coincidence, but it won't stop people from making the comparison (regardless of whether or not we do well at competition). I also admit that we used the Ri3D CAD to inform our prototyping--but we didn't just build their catapult, we used it as a starting point from which to iterate (while we also worked on a variety of other designs).
Teams that post everything they do online aren't robbing teams of creativity unless those teams choose to rob themselves of creativity; and every single team that uses those ideas (and even possibly that CAD) to rise up from the BLTs to be competitive is a win all day and all season long--because the next year, they'll be looking to go further still.