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There are some changes beginning this 2007 FIRST season. Below is some general information on the competition. Specific details and rules will be available in December 2007.
* The Autodesk Inventor Award winner will be announced at the FIRST Championship.
* The Autodesk Visualization Award winner will also be announced at the FIRST Championship. There will no longer be regional Autodesk Visualization Awards.
* For both competitions, entries will be submitted and available for public viewing on the Autodesk FIRSTbase website.
* Autodesk judges will review all entries and advance 5 finalists for each of the two awards.
* The 5 finalists will be posted to the Autodesk FIRSTbase website approximately two weeks before Championship where FIRST Robotics team members can view and vote for the final winner.
* Voting for the final winners in both categories will also continue on-site at the FIRST Championship.
* One winner for each award will be announced at the FIRST Championship. Please note that there will no longer be an Honorable Mention or Rookie winner.
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Elimination of awards!?!? How does this show our animators that what they are doing is important? How does this get more teams to submit animations? No inventor awards at regionals!?!? I don't think we had them before, but we have always needed them, and to not get them again is a big disappointment. How does this take FIRST beyond the group of kids building robots in their garages? However much real engineers may play with cardboard, real engineering comes from the use of high level software, and the need for use of high level software. Not enough teams make use of this software provided to them. Do we really think they will if we say "this aspect of FIRST is not award worthy"? Did someone miss the
I in F
IRST? Or are there just some other compelling reasons I don't know about?
In addition, while I am very appreciative of Autodesk's continuing support of the program, I feel quite limited by limited number of licenses they provide. It is a hard thing for me to tell a student, "I know you love this software, but this student standing next to you has more of a need for it, so he can use it, and you can't." FIRST is expensive. I know we get more than we pay for, but with how much we pay, we try to make it as good of an experience for each student as possible. It is very challenging to not be able to allow every student the access to the tools (software) they need. And if you like the "level the playing field" argument, that may be applicable here as well.
Autodesk has no problem giving away free student licenses to any college student in Mechanical Engineering, Industrial design, gaming/animation, or civil engineering or architecture disciplines. Why not any high school FIRST student? Why only 10? Why only 30 day trials? Build season is ~6 weeks long. And we like to be productive pre and post season too.
I love the software. I promote it like I work for them. But the lack of awards, and the minimal number of licenses is quite disappointing.