This season, we probably did things the "wrong" way. Vague concept of scoring on all three levels, followed by some measurements taken from the field drawings (and its accompanying trigonometry) yielded a PVC arm capable of reaching the top spider. Not nearly enough attention was paid to prototyping the gripper, which is something I hope we fix for the off-season.
The finer details we hammered out more or less on the fly, such as tensioning the chain on our shoulder while providing enough chain wrap. (For that, we ended up using a short piece of UHMW channel we'd bought off McMaster-Carr and running it another way.)
Only the drive system was done up in CAD, although things the model left out caused a couple of issues (mainly dealing with chain running through where I'd put mounting plates).
Next season, however, I'm hoping we can improve our Inventor work to allow us to prototype more on our limited budget. (Electrons, as far as the team budget is concerned, are free.
)