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Originally Posted by Allison K
1) How much design work does your team do before kickoff?
2) How detailed are your designs (Sketches, Scaled Drawings, Completely CADed out, etc.)
I can think of plenty of advantages to working on designs in the off season, but it seems like some teams get rather attached to a design that they worked on in the off season, and are determined to use it even if there may be a better fit for the game. I know there must be teams that have overcome this obstacle. There's constantly amazing designs being posted here on CD, and when competition rolls around theres still something new and innovative out on the field.
If you're on a team that does do a lot of designing before kickoff how do you avoid getting attached to one. Do you just have a whole bunch of designs ready so that no matter what your particular strategy entails you have one that you can use?
Sometimes it seems almost advantageous to be a rookie team with no experience. We don't have any previous designs to be attached too. 
~Allison |
For starters…
1.) We’ve done a lot of designing and prototyping this offseason.
2.) Our team’s, and my own personal designs are done in various CAD programs (AutoCAD and Inventor, mainly)
You’re right that there’s a possibility of getting attached to a particular design before the build, in fact, we’re pretty attached to a particular system. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to get really good at designing/building the same type of mechanism over and over. It can save design and fabrication time at the beginning of the build, which as we all know is key to getting the robot built in time to practice. If it becomes advantageous to use a different design in lieu of the one we like, we will, but we don’t think that’ll be the case.
Speaking more for myself as a designer, you can never have enough ideas when it comes to your FIRST robot. You have to keep looking around for goodies to add to your bag of tricks, this includes looking at opponent’s robots, your own old robots, and machines in industry. Always try to think of ways to lighten something, or make it more compact, or easier to machine…
I respectfully disagree with your thought that rookies might have an advantage over a veteran team, having no designs they’re previously attached to. You’re at a huge disadvantage when compared to teams that have been refining designs since the last build period ended, especially those who have built and tested their ideas. You’re also at a huge disadvantage compared to teams who have experience successfully building mechanisms. I mean, even if FIRST changed every single motor in the Kit of Parts, it would only take an hour (at the most) for many teams who have designed in the offseason to adapt their designs to the new motors.
Working in the offseason is key to helping give your drivers a better chance at driving well in competition (because you’ll finish your robot earlier), which in turn gives you a better chance at winning an event (although we all know there’s a ton of luck involved in winning a Regional).
More thoughts some other time...
-Bill