I believe Andy Baker did a nice presentation on this in Atlanta a few years back for the championship. I'll see if I can find a link.
It seems we've always gone with this on 269.
Day 1- Review Game
- Analyze Game by determining all available options to play the game
- Decide how we want to play the game
Week 1- Individuals sketch ideas
- Mentors help break down the ideas and determine the possible success of each
- Decide on drive system
- We usually have a mentor that kind of settles into their part of the robot. For instance, we had a mentor that helped the kids with the lift system. We had one that helped with the elevator for tube placement, and we had two that really just focused on the drive system the whole time. Of course we have our electrical and programming mentors as well.
- Mockups
- Prototyping
Week 2- Frame Design
- CAD Designs of Individual Components
- Optimization of Designs
- Constraining Each Component (Weight, Size)
- Continued Game Analysis
- Frame Manufacturing
- Drive Prototype Done
Week 3- Part Manufacturing
- Drive Assembly (Depending on drive, could be later)
- Manipulator Assembly
- Refining Parts and CAD Drawings
Week 4- Component Testing
- Robot Assembly
- First drive test
- Usually completely taking half the robot off and putting it in the dumpster and redesigning it. Usually the most crucial component...
- Driver practice near end of week if lucky
Week 5- Programming optimization
- Programming of the individual components
- Driver Practice
- Fixing problems
Week 6- Fixing
- Optimizing
- Practicing
- Shipping
- Finally, sleep... But probably not.
This definitly varies from year to year, but this seems to be the best starting point. Some years like last, we worked on the drive all the way into week 4 and really didn't finish assembling the robot and uploading the finished code until people were sitting there yelling at us that we needed to crate the thing.