Quote:
Originally Posted by abhishekmalle
Ok, ok. So I'm getting the general feel here. CAD isn't absolutely needed for a successful team and could maybe be postponed till we actually have a mentor of some sort.
To the teams that CAD:
-Is the entire robot done in CAD before the manufacturing process begins? Or is there more of a rolling system where the robot is built as the CAD is completed?
-How much of that aforementioned planning is actually useful or are you just going through the motions?
-How do you go about generating interest for CAD? At least at my school, people don't exactly turn their heads at the prospect of joining robotics to CAD.
-How many people does it take to have a reasonably sized CAD team?
To the teams that don't usually CAD:
-Do you still have the entire robot planned out on paper (including dimensions) before manufacturing?
-How much of that aforementioned planning is actually useful or are you just going through the motions?
-Are there any specific build season procedures that you go through that have helped you in the absence of CAD.
I just realized how many times I used "CAD" in this post.  |
As a team that has more recently been designing in CAD as opposed to just modeling after design, the entire robot is extremely difficult to have finished in CAD before any manufacturing begins. Prototyping still needs to be done early on (and continued for several weeks) and the overall strategy/design still needs to be laid out before any serious CAD work can begin, since you can't really just CAD something without an end product in mind.
For the first time, our CAD team this year was able to have the design (mostly) modeled before the final manufacturing began (after about 3 weeks). However, we continued to work on resolving issues throughout the remainder of the season using CAD, whether that was by creating new parts to resolve rising problems, or by providing information to other sub-teams.
As for the team itself, it is rather difficult to get kids interested, but letting them know that all mechanical engineers use CAD, not a drill, as their primary tool can convey the importance of CAD. The team definitely does not need to be large; I've found that any number greater than 5 directly working on a CAD project can be counterproductive. This does not mean, however, that there should only be 5 students capable of CAD on the team. I recommend training as many people as possible, if only to provide them with the basic tools of engineering.