Behind The Design 2012

[Tom Line]

In 2012, Team 1718 asked for and received authorization to attempt to produce a new 'Behind The Design' book. After searching for submissions and compiling the responses, the team realized that we didn't have enough material to put together a book that could do the previous Behind The Design books justice. So the team decided to take another route.

Instead of a novel, the team decided to release the sections that were completed as a serial book: a new section would be released each week in December, leading up to the 2013 kickoff. Much of the information in this first release has been discussed elsewhere, so we considered this our "Beta Test". Another new section on a different robot will be released next week.

Thanks to teams 67, 341, 971, 1218, Richard Wallace, and AndyMark for their help in putting this together.

Please give us feedback. We've never tried something like this, and we're very interested in how the community thinks we can improve it. Enjoy!

Behind the Design: Installment 1

[Akash Rastogi]

This is fantastic! Thank you guys for putting this together.

Excited for the next one!

[Gregor]

This looks great! Looking forward to the next chapter.

[JOEL340]

This turned out really well. I can't wait to see the next chapter of another great team.

[Adam Freeman]

Looks great! Thanks for including us.

I was really hoping for another book, but I can understand the difficulty in gathering and coordinating all of the information required to create a book as good as the first two.

Feedback: There are a couple of pictures where the captions are carried over from previous pictures (CAD of the frame - caption references utility arm sketches, Utility Arm motor calcs - caption references the shifter).

Looking forward to next week.

[Nemo]

This is fantastic. Thanks a ton for putting this together, and thanks to the teams who shared design info for the project.

Our team marveled at the conceptual simplicity and versatility of 67's arm as soon as we saw the first videos of that robot, and we plagiarized some elements of that design to upgrade our robot before our second competition.

[Jared Russell]

Love it!

As an aside, there is no reason why every single team in FRC can't document their season as well as this book/67 did. It is easy to do, yet it becomes a powerful tool for showing to judges, presenting to sponsors and parents, and studying to iteratively improve your robot building process.

[JVN]

This. Is. Fantastic.

I wish there was one of these for every robot. Scratch that... I wish that EVERY TEAM would take the time to do this for their robot.

Kudos to 1718 for facilitating this, but I wish they didn't need to.

-John

[Joe G.]

Originally Posted by JVN

I wish that EVERY TEAM would take the time to do this for their robot.

+1

It would be awesome if teams would pledge to create something like this during the build period. It really doesn't take much to create a goldmine of information.

[Ether]

Originally Posted by Joe G.

+1

It would be awesome if teams would pledge to create something like this during the build period. It really doesn't take much to create a goldmine of information.

I look forward to seeing 1687's next year.

[Joe G.]

Originally Posted by Ether

I look forward to seeing 1687's next year.

You definitely will -- If I can find enough supporting images and WIP diagrams, I may put one together from 2012 as well to help support this project.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by JVN

This. Is. Fantastic.

I wish there was one of these for every robot. Scratch that... I wish that EVERY TEAM would take the time to do this for their robot.

Kudos to 1718 for facilitating this, but I wish they didn't need to.

-John

Maybe it's time you put out another JVN Challenge? I remember some of your previous ones, but I'm not sure how many teams followed through.

[JVN]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

Maybe it's time you put out another JVN Challenge? I remember some of your previous ones, but I'm not sure how many teams followed through.

Lots of teams were quick to say they would "of course do this!" Almost none actually did. Looks like 67 did.

-John

[Adam Freeman]

Originally Posted by JVN

Lots of teams were quick to say they would "of course do this!" Almost none actually did. Looks like 67 did.

-John

Following John's lead, I have tried for a couple of years to document our design "on the fly" during the build season. Every year starts out great, until we get actual parts that need to be put together. Then I spend most of my time with the parts and not with my computer....and nothing further gets documented.

We have had students take notes, mentors take notes, build journals, online design logs, etc.... it always ends up incomplete.

Most years we have created a Tech notes for our students to hand out when talking to judges for awards. These tech notes are usually pulled together at the end of teh build season and summarize the design and main aspects of the robot.

This year I decided to since our robot was so unique, it would be worth it to post it on CD. The response has been incredible.

I plan to continue on with it. Maybe one year the documentation will keep up with the build and I won't have to spend hours/days creating a new document.

[kylie.student.9]

Great idea! cant wait to see it!