In 2006, four of my friends and I started to learn Autodesk Inventor to help with the CAD for our robot that year. We spent most of the 2006 season building proficiency with Inventor instead of actually designing the robot, and ended up completing the CAD work after the robot was done. In our 2007 season, we were able to hit the ground running, help flesh out much of our design, and provide drawings and feedback to the rest of the build team. We finished that season with an Einstein banner and I came out with a deep appreciation of how important CAD is to the design process.
We got a shoutout from Autodesk
here. Unforunately the links on that site are dead, but it still contains the only image I was able to find of our work that year.