[Boltman]

Originally Posted by New Lightning

I agree, for the most part, with what has been said here so far. Where I differ however is that if you haven't really prototyped anything by this point you might run into fabrication issues or things not coming together correctly, or parts not working as anticipated. Last year my team didn't really have a final design until about this time during build season and when we finally finished your robot we found that our claw pick up, admittedly not the best way to go last year, didn't work and we were sunk. Our robot could barely pick up a tote and we didn't have enough time left in the build season to make any major designs changes and we were stuck with a robot at competition that we knew wasn't going to be competitive and it was hard on the team. I would really encourage that your prototype your things as you're building them in CAD to make sure that your idea will actually work before you build it and realize that what you have spent the past 3 weeks working on doesn't work.

Agree we learned that year 1 and last year.... I think the best advice I came across online (I forget which team it was) was to have the main robot or replica functioning prototype built by week 4 regardless of your resources, this allows for modification and driving/strategy time. We are desperately trying to hit that week 4 mark this year. As we have a week 1 only opportunity pending a wk 5 waitlist.

I admire teams with extensive prototype capabilities... even they from what I read don't wait until the last moment to assemble to allowing time for iterative improvements to the main design. Many reconfigure throughout using the bag allowance during competition season.