[FTC]: CAD Library Inventor

[TRWSHSHLX]

Thanks a lot!

So Cody CAD every link on the robots huh... Wow.

How do you render the pictures of the robot in Autodesk? Like what're the specific settings? I've never tried to make presentations / render pictures of my team's robot since I only cad it for the engineering / to-see-if-stuff-fits side of it.

When I used PTC I selected the axles and type in the numbers for the ratio and it spins the axles automatically, however it does not show the "calculated route". So for the chain calculation program in Autodesk, does it automatically wrap around the sprocket or there's some magical thing you need to do?

Your robot looks sweet... Can you post more pictures?

Questions about robot:
Drive type?
Drive ratio?
# of drive motors?
Which dispensers?
Magnetic?
Grab two goals (it looks it can but doesn't hurt to check )

Thanks again!

[Andrew Remmers]

Originally Posted by TRWSHSHLX

Thanks a lot!

So Cody CAD every link on the robots huh... Wow.

Actually Cody did that for some things, But in VEX we try to do that so we have our photorealistic renders like... This

We like doing final renders with every possible detail so at Aperture Robotics we design so that there isn't tensioning in things really we like it when things runs smoothly and not having to be tensioned to much... I try to teach my students on Exploding Bacon FTC the same. The robot shown only needs 2 chains tensioned out of the 8 runs of chain that there are, they did a great job engineering it and we hope to build it this summer (I think)

How do you render the pictures of the robot in Autodesk? Like what're the specific settings? I've never tried to make presentations / render pictures of my team's robot since I only cad it for the engineering / to-see-if-stuff-fits side of it.

Actually you won't believe me when I tell you this but the picture posted in the last post is just live rendering just enabling lighting and shadows into the model makes for what I thought to be a really pretty (for "stock" rendering) render. You also can use Inventor studio, something I haven't quite taken the time to learn myself. I normally export to Autodesk Showcase or something like that (Learning Publisher now) and I do my renders in render specific programs. Cody however says screw it and throws it into 3DS Max and makes some absolutely stunning works. (The original render image file size for the mecanum render attached is 50 mb).

When I used PTC I selected the axles and type in the numbers for the ratio and it spins the axles automatically, however it does not show the "calculated route". So for the chain calculation program in Autodesk, does it automatically wrap around the sprocket or there's some magical thing you need to do?

The chain calculation program in Inventor basically asks for whatever kinds of sprockets or idlers are in your "chain assembly" I guess I'll call it and what you do is select the mid-plane of the sprocket tell it the chain size and the number of teeth on the sprocket and how many sprockets and such. Here is where I have had trouble for some reason maybe I just haven't thought of a way to do it but constraining the sprockets it makes for you (speaking of which another idea just came up and ill have to try tomorrow) What happens though is it creates a chain path and a mock sprocket. Tools then show up that allow you to move the sprockets along 2 axis in relation to the plane they are already constrained to. Now what I do here is line up the mock sprockets with the FTC sprockets on the assembly and then click calculate after its all done. (Believe me Its ALOT EASIER doing it than reading it...)

If all else fails contact me on Skype, AIM or Facebook and I'll be glad to teach it to you.

Your robot looks sweet... Can you post more pictures?

Questions about robot:
Drive type?
Drive ratio?
# of drive motors?
Which dispensers?
Magnetic?
Grab two goals (it looks it can but doesn't hurt to check: ) )

Thanks again!

Drive train: Coaxial Crab Drive (first ever in FTC I think?)
Drive Ratio: 4:3 as shown (this was going to change)
Number of Drive Motors: 6 Drive Motors 2 more motors for intake and mechanical line up.
Which Dispensers: All, The students were working on magnet baton systems for this one.
Two goals, um actually It might have been able to do just that with a little bit of extra playing with it. I was really excited for this robot like you have no idea. I was on the verge of calling up some of my machining contacts to help build it.

The codename for this bot went by the "469 of FTC" due to one thing some students on our team wanted to try. Write the mother of all autonomous modes, This Autonomous mode would "swallow" the goal in autonomous mode carry it over the bridge line up on any of the dispensers and call it a day. I think we had numbers calculated for an absolutely perfect match with something upwards of 500 points (considering automode got one full dispenser inside the goal)

Enjoy some renders of the bot

To give you a view of what the robot looks like without the moveable goal.

Sorry for the long post.
Hope you find this helpful.

- Andrew

[TRWSHSHLX]

I've seen the picture of the mecanum on VEX forum before and I thought it was real... IT LOOKS REAL...

If there wasn't the label in the picture I'd still think it's real...

And about the robot, I knew that it's a crab drive when I first saw it but I didn't really believe it... And as far as I know / can remember, it's the first crab drive in FTC.

I think the advantages of the crab drive are limited in this year's game because of all the obstacles.

I'll try the chain tool sometime in the near future. What size chain does FTC have again? #25?

Thanks for the pictures! They look awesome and explains a lot!

And as for autonomous, what happened mostly at World's this year in elimination rounds was both alliances scored all preloads and had a defensive route so that if the other team attempted something your team had planned then it will be stopped. Did your team have any plans to avoid obstacles?

Can't wait till you release the KOP for FTC in Autodesk!!!

And last question for now, what are the specs of the computer that you're running all the programs (Autodesk Inventor, Showcase, etc.)?

Thanks!

[Andrew Remmers]

Originally Posted by TRWSHSHLX

I think the advantages of the crab drive are limited in this year's game because of all the obstacles.

Yes we know but we saw that and designed accordingly.

I'll try the chain tool sometime in the near future. What size chain does FTC have again? #25?

Yep!

Thanks for the pictures! They look awesome and explains a lot!

No Problem

And as for autonomous, what happened mostly at World's this year in elimination rounds was both alliances scored all preloads and had a defensive route so that if the other team attempted something your team had planned then it will be stopped. Did your team have any plans to avoid obstacles?

Actually Yes we did... Its hard for me to explain since the programmer that had programmed the routine used like every sensor you possibly could, again this system never got tested because the bot was never built. But in theory... It could avoid what the programmer would define as a foreign object. In this case if the robot knew it had the trailer inside already it would avoid foreign objects on the field the best it could such as trailers other robots and such and recalculate its way to the final position somehow (I have no idea how the programmer did it really) btw he is now on my College VEX team

Can't wait till you release the KOP for FTC in Autodesk!!!

And last question for now, what are the specs of the computer that you're running all the programs (Autodesk Inventor, Showcase, etc.)?

Thanks

My computer is a 17 inch Macbook pro

Specs.

2.66 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor
8 GB of RAM (recently upgraded from 4 GB had no problems with 4GB just had the opportunity to upgrade to 8GB for free )
Both discrete and dedicated graphics cards Nvidia 8600 and 8800 I think? Forget that one
and a 7200 RPM 320 gb hard drive

[TRWSHSHLX]

Nice! VEX college has 60 seconds of autonomous and sounds like he can do some serious damage... Especially in the college challenge when the alliance can work together. I think getting all the balls & barrels to the isolation zone to score would be the key (since there's NO gate that can be lifted...) and it's nearly impossibly to defend against during autonomous.

A combination of Gyro & Accelerometer should be able to do what you described with some serious coding (especially for the accelerometer) if implemented correctly (Heading using Gyro, X & Y displacement using accelerometer).

Do you know whether the programmer utilized the protoboard? If so, what kind of sensors did he use?

Thanks again!

[Andrew Remmers]

Originally Posted by TRWSHSHLX

Nice! VEX college has 60 seconds of autonomous and sounds like he can do some serious damage... Especially in the college challenge when the alliance can work together. I think getting all the balls & barrels to the isolation zone to score would be the key (since there's NO gate that can be lifted...) and it's nearly impossibly to defend against during autonomous.

A combination of Gyro & Accelerometer should be able to do what you described with some serious coding (especially for the accelerometer) if implemented correctly (Heading using Gyro, X & Y displacement using accelerometer).

Do you know whether the programmer utilized the protoboard? If so, what kind of sensors did he use?

Thanks again!

Im not sure what he did I think he was planning on using the protoboard for some kind of sensors that detect distance like an IR range finder and some other stuff. He was a pretty crazy programmer, apparently he had plans to make his original teams (some drama long story) robot basically completely autonomous throughout auto and tele mode. He basically wanted to implement that on this bot but with more human control added into the equation.

Aperture is going a different way I'm sure you have see our Hand Of God discussion. Well thats the isolation bot the other bot we still dont quite know what to do, since the odds of actually getting that entire center stack of game objects are very slim considering the robot that would have to do that would be fairly complex, so we are taking a different approach that does close to the same thing but in a different way, however you will have to wait and see for that one

- Andrew

[TRWSHSHLX]

I feel bad for whoever is going to be carrying the robot on and off the field...

How do you constraint nuts and bolts in Autodesk?

Thanks.

[Andrew Remmers]

Originally Posted by TRWSHSHLX

I feel bad for whoever is going to be carrying the robot on and off the field...

How do you constraint nuts and bolts in Autodesk?

Thanks.

It depends on what metal if its VEX metal I use a Tangent constraint with a calculation to center the part.

If its FTC I use a simple insert constraint (Furthest one to the left on the constrain tool bar) its pretty easy

If you have any problems go ahead and ask away

P.S. I did some real rendering of our FTC bot today...

These are the results...

-Andrew

[TRWSHSHLX]

Interesting looking collector!

I'm having issues constraining the nuts and bolts with VEX parts. They're all centered through the axis (I added axis in their sketch on all the parts but after that I found out SuperSonic 24# posted their CAD library and they did the same thing... Yay for dedication...) and they're mated on both sides of the metal but it doesn't work. What's the offset for tangent constrain? And what tangent to what?

But for some reason it works when there's no metal in between...

Are the parallelograms on the side for lining up to dispensers?

Thanks!

[Andrew Remmers]

Tangent Constraint is the 3rd one from the left (I think) To center the hardware inside the hole from the edges of the holes the dimension is .009 from both edges.

[TRWSHSHLX]

Sounds good! I won't be able to test it until later but does the nut automatically goes onto the bolt? I tried mating the metal surface with the bolt / nut but it shows constraining error. Any suggestions? (I feel like there's an obvious thing that I'm doing wrong since I was able to put the nut & bolt together when there's no metal between them and I did it in PTC...)

Oh and do you know anything about dealing with wires and cables in Inventor? I'm trying to make the model as realistic as possible so... Wiring... Not excited about that... Yay...

[Andrew Remmers]

Originally Posted by TRWSHSHLX

Sounds good! I won't be able to test it until later but does the nut automatically goes onto the bolt? I tried mating the metal surface with the bolt / nut but it shows constraining error. Any suggestions? (I feel like there's an obvious thing that I'm doing wrong since I was able to put the nut & bolt together when there's no metal between them and I did it in PTC...)

Oh and do you know anything about dealing with wires and cables in Inventor? I'm trying to make the model as realistic as possible so... Wiring... Not excited about that... Yay...

I have played with wiring with a not so fun experience. I ended up using the tool to route pneumatics tubing once. You can see here. I didn't do a very good job but it was a first time with the tool so, and I teach myself through trial and error...

to put the nut on you mate the centerline to centerline or mate around a radius. So click the rounded surface of the bolt then click the rounded inner surface of the nut and they should snap together, After that you mate surface to surface on the bolt and the nut and you should be complete.