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Originally Posted by Cyberphil

I see. We tried not to get into design in our early post-kickoff meetings. We brainstormed designs and, "Decided," as a team, so our meetings consisted mostly of strategy discussions. Interesting to hear what other teams do.

While it's not the first thing you should discuss, brainstorming robot designs (via rough sketches) based on the strategy designs discussed can help constrain the problem (for example, could we even build something capable of achieving all desired functions given robot dimensions and weight).

Also, I like the students to think about mechanism design ideas before the "Robot in 3 days" reveal videos come out. Once that happens it seems like creativity becomes more restricted