Our plans for the robot build season has been the same thing year in and year out. We go and watch the kickoff while someone stays at the school and records it from our Gen Net class so we can come back from picking up the k.o.p. and then we brain storm for usually 2-3 days. Referring back to the video and the manual. We break up into groups and formulate ideas wither they are cad's drawn by hand, or simply read of paper. Then the whole team sits down and we talk about the ideas that we came up with and test and perfect what we think will be the most effective design and proceed to build it. Thats just us though....
Jacob