[Nikhil Bajaj]

While I somewhat agree with the sentiment that, "Hey, maybe we should encourage kids who are making these CAD drawings to learn how to do some of the math, too..." I do have some reservations about some of the ideas here.

First of all, as mentors, it is our job to encourage students to pursue these avenues. Anyone who can think logically and do multiplication and division can do gear ratio calculations. I don't know why we're making such a big deal about this, because they are pretty trivial. There's no calculus involved, and the physics typically utilized by most FRC teams to make such decisions are really simple. That's fine--that's all the math it requires. Any high school student with a geometry/trigonometry background and encouragement and support from a mentor should be able to do it. So we can just tell them that the math is easy to do for these things, and give them an idea of how to do it. Then they will think for other systems that the math may be similarly easy, and give it a shot themselves.

In fact, I'd argue, as someone who has been involved in solid and structural mechanics over the past few years, that those who CAD chassis, etc. and put them up for review could be the wiser ones. Structural systems are much harder to "do the math" for. I would not expect someone without three or four semesters of engineering/technology college education to do much more than get an intuitive understanding, much less "run the numbers" or "do the math." It would be difficult to teach this material to high school students, and it is unlikely that even the minority of mentors in FRC would be able to do a good job of much more than an intuitive understanding. Sure, Inventor/Solidworks/Pro\E etc. do supply finite element method capability, but the variability in those results is so great when in the hands of a novice that one should give those factors of safety a wide berth. They should still be performed though, but the factors of safety should be held a little suspect.

The students who are posting these things here are probably not from teams where their mentors have proclaimed an aversion to "not doing the numbers" or whatever, and probably have not been directly encouraged to "do the math first." So why be snarky or sarcastic about it? I know it is well-meaning, but it is pretty off-putting, especially for me as a fellow mentor. Instead just encourage them to "do the numbers," post up a white paper and refer people to it every so often, and that's it. I liked IKE's idea of the paper compilation, and especially that he restricted the scope to 6+WDs, so that the topic wouldn't get diluted and people could get a lot of detail out of it. You could even just give a horror story of when someone didn't use the numbers, and tell them to be careful. But there's no need for snarkiness/sarcasm, especially in a public forum.

CAD is a useful tool, and those who post their designs and work here are pretty brave to do so. I'm just glad they are learning something, and trying to learn from others in the forums. We can be snarky and off-putting in the way we respond to them in an attempt to improve their designs and methods, or we can...just tell them directly and be nice about it.

You catch more flies with honey...