[philso]

I feel it is more important that your team learn to design a robot than it is to draw a robot in CAD. Designing the robot requires thinking about what it has to do, what materials it can be built from and how it can be manufactured.. This thinking is what determines the quality of a design, not how the design was implemented. Once one has worked out a good design, it can be implemented in CAD or on the back of an envelope. If your team is not sufficiently fast at CAD, then the designers will spend all their time "putting parts on the screen" instead of thinking about the design. Your team may get the most value by using CAD as a tool to work out things like geometries (how long does the Canburglar need to be and where does the pivot point need to be).

Last year, we had one student who is a very proficient CAD operator who drew up all kinds of mechanisms that ultimately did not work, could not be built or did not have adequate strength (catapult). He also was of the opinion that "CAD is perfect". We have professional designers at work who make the same sort of mistakes.

This year, we threw out the custom sheet metal trays for holding our electronics and control system because the CAD of the robot was missing the parts needed to retain the sprockets on the shafts for the drive wheels. Adding those parts meant the shafts protruded too much into the electronics tray and would hit the electronics components. The design was extremely tight and the close proximity of the parts on the electronics tray and the drive wheel assembly meant that neither were serviceable and assembly could only happen in a particular sequence.

If you are using a sponsor to make parts for you, make sure they will deliver the parts in the timeframe you need. I recall watching one Houston area team un-bag their robot and frantically finish the assembly process because their sponsor was late and delivered the parts the day before bag and tag.