My team has never participated in a Quick Build. They're great for rookie teams or teams that need that push to get a base up and running, but generally we need to take chassis design (width/length) into account with our other mechanisms, and the electrical system, while usually on the bottom, is always more complex than a quick build (a quick build may only have speed controllers for the drive motors... we usually end up with 8-10!) and it's usually designed as a separate, removable subsystem on the robot.
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Originally Posted by brennonbrimhall
I don't know how your team operates, or what happy medium your team has found, but I feel that it's a common misconception that the robotics season starts in January and ends in April. It's true that some teams operate this way, but my impression is that lots of the high caliber teams work throughout the year.
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I would agree with this. Our year officially starts with our summer camp at the end of July, and ends with our Banquet in May, which gives us about 2 months a year "off". We separate that into three seasons, though - summer camp, the fall off-season, and the winter build/competition season. Of course, that time "off" is spent with team leadership (mentors and captains) having planning meetings and getting things ready for the new season. And this year we have a separate sub-group working on the continuation of the Alpha Testing for the new control system (although pretty soon we'll have to rename the group to the Beta Test group!). In fact, even though the season "ended" a week ago, we have 3+ other teams coming over tomorrow for an Alpha Testing session. Busy Busy Busy!