[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by asid61

I don't think that anybody from around my area would outright copy from a CAD file. I would feel the need to improve upon the design or remake it with my own watermark or splice it with other designs. It might vary from team to team, as I live in a fiercely competitive/ prideful area.

The issue that most vocal detractors of the 3 day builds isn't about teams copy cad files... It's about teams seeing a finished design and copying the whole concept. How many choo-choo's and el-toro's did we see last year? Teams take the finished robots and just say "let's do what they did" instead of experimenting, prototyping and coming up with their own ideas.

Personally, I love this new direction. Focusing on educational materials and prototyping various ideas will hopefully help to increase creativity and diversity in Design, without giving teams an "easy out" of copying a complete robot they know works.