[Pretzel]

While CAD drawings and files are not a requirement, they can be of great use to teams that implement them correctly. Some of the benefits of a CAD drawing for our team are as follows:
- We can "prototype" to check geometry and configuration without needing to spend both time and money building something. Last year we planned to climb on the inside of the pyramid but an astute student found a major geometry problem that would have prevented us from competing before we had even started on our climbing mechanism.
- Modular systems are much easier with robots designed in CAD. If you plan ahead and get a drivetrain designed immediately (after discussing pros and cons, of course) you can design the rest of your components around a central base that may only need minor tweaks to work.
- It gives students looking at a career in engineering valuable experience and a head start on becoming certified in a program such as Solidworks. I know that I plan to take the Solidworks Associate Certification test this coming May and don't expect to have too much difficulty with it.
- It gives you exact dimensions to reference and look to when fabricating parts. This helps to prevent mistakes and gives you the ability to (using Solidworks or another similar program) create a drawing file that has all the needed reference dimensions labeled to take to a machine with you.
- Having CAD files, both for individual parts and whole robots in an assembly, is a large boost for presenting to both sponsors and the community. It helps to show just how much time and effort you put into this robot and gives you something you could give to a potential sponsor on a flash drive for them to see exactly what you do even after you've finished your presentation.

These things being said, designing an entire robot in a CAD program is a large undertaking and my team splits the build season accordingly. Our mechanical sub-team spends usually about the first two weeks making mechanism specific prototypes and modeling the entire robot in Solidworks. We then attempt to spend the rest of the build season fabricating and refining our designs while a few people help with updating the CAD model to reflect changes we have made during testing. It's a system that works well for us.