Rage builds 2 robots simulationasly as well. Most of our building goes on at one high school ( we have 5) and they just build both at once, usually having the engineer put together a part, then having a student make the second one ( so we know what it SHOULD look like, most of the time
) This helps a lot, because the students know how everything goes together, and so do the engineers!! The first robot is shipped on the ship date, and is compeition robot. The second was stays as the "evil twin" (as jon said before) and is shown to students who didn't build it, and used constantly for driving practice. The evil twin is ALWAYS made of as many 2nd hand parts as possible, yet still as close as we can get to the real thing, so we will know how it runs, what problems could be and how to fix them. This is, unfortunatly for other, fortunatly for us, a HUGE advantage, also having the full size field to pratice on, thus our drivers know basically what will happen and get PLENTY of practice driving the robot. So basically, what we do agrees completely with what John & everyone has said.
And i do believe it is a great way to do things!
note: anyone who wants to during or after build is welcome to use our field, just let someone know!!