Quote:
Originally Posted by magnets
So, between 2013 and 2014, the definition of "overtly deviate" has changed.
This is horrible and extremely frustrating for me, as our team has designed our pickup off of an angled bumper. We figured that since this EXACT SENTENCE allowed angled bumpers in the past, it would again allow angled bumpers in the future.
Here's the rule which allowed them in 2013, and disallows them in 2014. If this can happen for this rule, who's to say that a all of a sudden roughtop tread is a traction material, and all roughtop wheels are illegal?
To begin with, this is just the GDC being lazy and copying a sentence from next year's manual and not giving an answer. This really doesn't answer the question at all.
The first part (there is no explicit requirement that BUMPERS be perfectly parallel to the floor) is fine. It means "nowhere does it say bumpers must be perfectly parallel to the floor".
The next part "however the
requirement that BUMPERS be constructed per Figure 4-4, the vertical cross-section, does implicitly
mean that a BUMPER should not overtly deviate from this orientation." A vertical cross section of an angled bumper would have the pool noodles be slightly oval shaped.
In 2013, an oval would not be considered "overtly deviated" from a circle, which makes sense, as a very slight oval could be mistaken, by everybody's favorite "reasonably astute observer" as a circle.
In 2014, an oval does "overtly deviate" from a circle.
If they're making changes like this, I'm begging for them to let us know before halfway through build season after we've wasted a lot of time and money building three sets of nice angled bumpers. But we'll be keeping our angled bumpers, because I'd be willing to bet that between now and the end of build, there's a chance that the definition of "overtly deviate" will change again.
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If you're complaining about a Q&A answer (to a somewhat vague question to begin with) not being sufficient enough, then ask a Q&A yourself with a more specific question (ie. can a single bumper segment be at a 45 degree angle with the ground or something).
And if the rule you quoted allowed angled bumpers last year, maybe, it technically didn't, but there was no one who asked a Q&A to get an interpretation of that rule. Maybe the GDC's intent of not allowing traction devices DOES include roughtop tread. If someone asked the Q&A if roughtop tread is a traction device, then we'd know for sure their stance on that.
What I'm trying to get at is, if you're committing to a design off an assumption of a sentence in a manual based off a past Q&A answer, you should probably ask it on Q&A for some form of further clarification