Great to Hear from you Gui!
Well, our design meets this year were a wreck, to say the least.
We're trying new concepts though.
We usually leave the group part for after the design period. Anyone can be on any group. Anyone can submit an idea for anything, and we usually just have long discussions until we usually end up voting or something.
This year I'm trying two new methods (design strategies, if you will):
-Pre-Season Design
-Function Analysis
Pre Season Design:
It's just as the name states. We're putting together a "Design Library" of past years designs, and any designs we come up with pre-season. For example, my designs for my Multi-Drive, and MCU were all done over the summer. I'm presenting them to the team at our December meeting. (And a nifty presentation it will be too, in 3D! Everyone grab your interlaced glasses!)
Some things can be decided pre season. I'm not saying you can come up with your exact drive train and controls, but you can agree to things such as "we'll stick with this drive train unless the game shows that we need something different". This kind of pre-planning can save ALOT of time. If you come up with an inventory list of parts for your drive train agrees on pre-season, you can have all the parts within the first week to begin building.
Sub-Systems (ie claws, stackers, etc.) can't be agreed on pre-season, but generic ideas can be submitted that can easily be tweaked for the game. Or, you can look through your previous season's designs and tweak one of them.
-Function Analysis:
Basically, determining the functions of your robot. Hey, it's where you begin. My method involves listing all the possible functions, and then I have about 1 page's worth of things to do to water it down to a final few list of functions, each sorted by importance. I've found a rather shocking thing too, (As you know) I've been in FIRST since the 02' season. I went back and viewed the kickoffs from year's past and performed my little methods, and all the "robots" I came up with had the exact traits as the winning team's Robots from that year, even at the national level.
Well, we're going to toy with it. Anyway, If you combine this by getting your functions along with some design libraries and pre-season design, you can't go too wrong.
But, it is different for each team...
And, since we're home schoolers, we can spend alot more of our time on design. On our Six week layout that we've got for this year, only the first week is allotted for design. We're really hoping that we'll have our bot by the night of kickoff though
It's been done...
Anyway, I'm kinda cheating, because my multi-drive functions as 4-5 different drives in one. That way we don't really need to worry about what kind of drive system we need.
As far as controls are concerned, you can come up with some pretty good layout ideas pre-season even without knowing your robot. I designed a generic "Tackle box" of controls that plugs in through two terminal plugs to the robot. Keeps everything organized and clean. Rewiring can be done on the plug level within seconds.
It's that kind of generic design that can help along the way.
Anyway, hope that helped a little bit...
(PS, Is it true that Dee won't be working with 422 this year?
Maybe I'll see her at FLL on the 22nd...)