Does CAD get respect on your team?

[Henry Anthony]

I am wondering if your team considers CAD as an important part of the competition or is there little interest in it?

[Billfred]

For 1293, CAD is essential. We went through several dozen revisions of our hopper and shooter this season, and only wound up with one set of prototype parts that proved useless for Chomp. (Oddly enough, it was the one teaser we put up on Delphi.)

If it weren't for Paul and Mr. Stankovic, our two CAD nuts, we would have run out of room to hold all of our discarded prototypes around week three!

[Swan217]

Originally Posted by Henry Anthony

I am wondering if your team considers CAD as an important part of the competition or is there little interest in it?

Paul Copioli, myself, and the ThunderChickens think that CAD is really important, especially for the students to learn. It's a valuable tool in explaining the design and finding potential problems before actually building anything. In 2005, most of the designing and part and assembly drawings were done by students, which we're very proud of. I only assume that they've taken it to the next level this year?

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by Henry Anthony

I am wondering if your team considers CAD as an important part of the competition

More than you'd ever believe.

Our team considers it the basis of the design process. We don't even touch tools (unless to prototype), until we've designed the entire mechanism of choice in Inventor.

[crazykid234]

It's the same on our team. Everything gets drawn in CAD before we make it, except to prototype. We also use CAD as a valuable way to show judges and other teams how our robot works, especially at competition.

[Katie Reynolds]

Originally Posted by 114ManualLabor

Our team considers it the basis of the design process. We don't even touch tools (unless to prototype), until we've designed the entire mechanism of choice in Inventor.

Same with #857; before we even think about building it, it's drawn in Inventor.

[Ian Curtis]

Nope. The only thing we CAD'd was our frame, and that was to ensure that the hole were in the right place as it's built out of two folded sheets of 1/8th inch. We used it last year and figured that it was probably the reason why we designed and built our robot in the 240 hours leading to the arrival of the FedEx guy. So we didn't use it this year and not surprisingly, we got a little carried away with protoyping and did the same thing, again. So we could probably use it, just don't get carried away. Also, the two years we CAD'd the robot, the robot didn't look anything like the CAD drawing.

[Koko Ed]

Most definately it is.
CAD was the main focus of the web design team this year and many of the students are encouraged to learn and use the program. It is very important to our robot design process.

[brandy836]

One of the first things we did on our team this year was teach the new kids how to use CAD. Most of them loved it, and we used it for designing everything.

[artdutra04]

The only part on our robot that was CADed this year was our shooter. Everything else was drawn up and designed using graph paper and pencils and other drafting tools. Our team engineer has a whole notebook full of amazingly detailed drawings for almost every part on our robot.

[Daniel Brim]

Not particularly.

Let me tell you, it's really frustrating when you make a part in CAD that works and makes system integration easy and then they put it in the wrong spot, making it a nightmare.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by DanielBCR

Let me tell you, it's really frustrating when you make a part in CAD that works and makes system integration easy and then they put it in the wrong spot, making it a nightmare.

Ditto. Had a part in one of my drawings that had to go a certain way to avoid interference. It was welded on backwards. Ouch.

Actually, the CAD team (3 of us, 2 of whom had almost current data on what was being built) got some respect this year, in the form of "Can you do this for me?" At one point we had so many people asking that we had overload. Also, the CAD crew had some idea of what the robot would look like before most people did, so one day "Can you help me find a place for the battery?" from one of the electronics people. We used CAD to figure out approximate areas and interference zones, then headed for the frame (on a table nearby) to get a better idea.

[Henry Anthony]

Thank you all for your helpful responses. On 1250, no one even knows there is an Inventor award. I guess that tells you how important CAD is on the team.

In defense of the team, there is a shortage of computing facilities to perform this work so a single designer is doing it at home. More an exercise in documenting the design rather than design to build.

As this was posted in the CAD section, I am not surprised to find that most of the responses were on a positive note. Maybe I'll try in the general forum and see what happens.

Good luck with all your entries!

[wilshire]

I believe the CAD drawings are very important to design. Our mentors however did not think it was. So when we came upon the problem of not having the right wheels because we were making the robot basicly as we went we had run into the issue and had to reorder wheels. Needless to say for all those who don't think its important there is a prime example. That and if you are really savy about using it you can model everything down to bolts and wires and can generally get to know your robot very well even if it is shipped off