[Swampdude]

For 179 cad is always used, but very hard to work into part of the mentor education process during build. Some of the problems we have are computer access at the school, and being able to transfer files back and forth from school and home/work through the school firewall. Since the design process usually takes a few days of non stop work, you can't be at the school all the time, and you can't transfer the files in and out through the school firewall. We need a way to host files that we could get at from anywhere, including through the school firewall. But I'm not sure how we can do that as the administrators are kind of like OZ out there somewhere. CD burning is a pain and can be risky as data might get corrupted or lost/overwritten and finding a burner is a crap shoot at school. I'm glad I saw this thread cuz now I'm going to ask the students to pull this off. Unfortunately the firewall has hindered us in many ways, keeping us from models on line and we can't use Chiefdelphi there either - as it's a chat forum. I know they mean well, but in our circumstances, they stop our progress too much.
This year we're trying to get the students to use CAD prior to kickoff so they get more exposure to it. But in the previous years, our meeting nights are short and the design process is usually happening at peoples homes shortly after kickoff. Last year I spent 24hours straight modeling our design so we could get the parts made at the water jet the next day. That was fun!
I'm leaning towards teaching them AutoCAD since it's still more of an industry standard. Though Inventor has more capability I just think it's probably more useful to give them experience with something they're more likely to use in a typical workplace - since AutoCAD is so much more adaptable. I know Autodesk doesn't want to hear that, but in my experience it's true.