Quote:
Originally Posted by Monochron
Maybe I am undervaluing the usefulness of that hole pattern, if so could someone enlighten me? I see it as something that can save you some measuring when trying to line things up, but can also cause you to waste time cutting the tubing so the holes line up perfectly, and can make mounting near a hole a serious pain as it ruins the strength of the metal at that point.
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The hole pattern would immediately save an hour or two of drilling tubes/plates while simultaneously guaranteeing precision alignment with the VEX gussets. This compounds later down the road - imprecise rivet holes (1)require the piece to be re-made or (2) are more likely to fail, causing heartache during a match in addition to having to re-make the mechanism.
Depending on the game and a team's design process, the hour or two is paramount to quick iteration, which then translates into getting a working design earlier in the season. 2014 really required fast iteration of a physical machine if a team did catapults. 2013 probably didn't require too much physical iteration except at the disc transition points. 2012 didn't require any physical iteration for the main game piece (since it was so squishy), but required a lot of iteration for the bridge lowering. And so on ...