Quote:
Originally Posted by julianpowell
Ideally your design people are the ones CADing. After all, CAD is a tool for designing.
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I would go as far as to say that you have to make sure your design people are invested in using CAD before you start using it for the build season. In 2012 and 2013, my team's design and CAD groups were separate, and it caused nothing but pain for both parties.
The end of the season is the perfect time to start building your CAD/D team-- you have plenty of time before next season. CAD is not something that can be learned effectively overnight-- it requires patience and effort, like any other skill. A lot of kids are intimidated byt the steep learning curve, but I personally think it's one of the best technical skills one can learn on a robotics team.
The other thing would be, as Eric said, efficient parts design. Your designers should be intimately familiar with the contraint tools of your program of choice-- both sketch constraints and assembly constraints. Good "model intent"-- ie, designing for changes-- is key to having an efficient CAD team.
If your team does not have good model intent practices, to quote the immortal words of South Park, "You're gonna have a bad time."