[Doug G]

Getting back to the poll at hand.... Its a kinda of a vague question and the results will depend on the resources and experience of your team. For some rookie teams, I'd encourage getting something built within the first couple of weeks. Veteran teams and those with more resources can spend 3 weeks "planning" before they start building. In 2003, our third year, we spent the first 2 weeks planning and designing and CAD the entire bot - it was cool and our robot came out looking cool, but just didn't perform that well. It's also the only year we never made it to the championship rounds at any of the three regionals we attended.

So now we focus heavily on prototyping our ideas and possible designs in weeks 1 and 2. By week 3 we shift into the actual robot design and some CAD where needed. Depending on the CAD ability of my students, only some of the robot is done in CAD. Last year we had an overall inventor model, with detailed modeling done of the transmissions and such. By Week 4 the robot frame is will get finished and fabricate any manipulators. Week 5, finish manipulators and assemble it together. By Thursday of Week 6, the robot should be complete and wired. The next four days are spent practicing and programming.

I can't stress the importance that building actual working prototypes during the design process has had on our robots the past few years. Use wood and pvc to mock up a shooter or arm. We have FP motors and their plastic transmissions ready with sprockets already bolted on to their output hubs, ready for testing out ideas and designs. We also have a protobot that is a kit bot drive base with extra speed controllers, relays, soleniods and air tanks already in place so that if we want to see how an arm may behave we can quickly clamp it or bolt it on the protobot and test in just one day.