[FTC]: Engineering Notebook - PR and Electronic

[team F.T.C 4240]

My point about the "Business plan" is

1: That it gives you an idea of how much fundraising/money the team needs to make to be able to go to competition/robot and other expenses.

2: If you put the work into it why wouldn't you take a page of the notebook to put it in (not put it all throughout to confuse people).

3: if you are doing a project by your self or with a small group, and you have say $1,000 dollars. You start building and part way through you find it costs way more then you expected (like $25,000 for everything), well the project is half build and you are out of money. It becomes to late that you can't make enough by the dead line and your project just sits and collects dust (and you are out $1000). That's just an example, all I am saying it is helpful to do it. Every time I go on the highway I see a half built building that has been there for 20 or so years. The person started building and ran out of money so there it stands (just an example I see a lot).

4: For projects i'm getting into the habit of doing that just because I don't want to start and not be able to finish, I see the point that in collage they wont really care but if I am doing a project just for fun its a good habit to get into. Just a note, this is a very, very small part of what our team does and its mostly because we created what we call "the SuGO project" (www.sugobot.com) which is "Sumo Lego robots", the website will give more info. Since we are selling the kits and parts we use it.

BOTTOM LINE: Making the "Business plan" is a small part of our team to give us a better view of how much fundraising we need to do. We put it in the "Engineering notebook". It earns us no special award in the competition but is a good experience for the team members. If you wish to discuss this further please feel free to message me but don't just post on this thread because its about giving ideas of how to make a better engineering notebook, save the comments for a message, not a thread, Thanks.

Feel free to message me, I would be happy to answer questions/discuss FTC or what my/your team does. ~Derrick

[gblake]

Originally Posted by team F.T.C 4240

My point about the "Business plan" is

...

BOTTOM LINE: Making the "Business plan" is a small part of our team to give us a better view of how much fundraising we need to do. We put it in the "Engineering notebook". It earns us no special award in the competition but is a good experience for the team members. If you wish to discuss this further please feel free to message me but don't just post on this thread because its about giving ideas of how to make a better engineering notebook, save the comments for a message, not a thread, Thanks.

Feel free to message me, I would be happy to answer questions/discuss FTC or what my/your team does. ~Derrick

Derrick,

I am giving you and all other readers my opinions about how to create better Engineering Notebooks.

I am occasionally a judge for robotics competitions. For that reason I like to give teams my perspective and the reasoning behind it. I just reread the FTC Game Manual rules about creating and judging Engineering Notebooks. What I read reinforced that my judging approach is correct for FTC's Think Award.

As a judge, I would not consciously penalize a team for putting a moderate amount of extra material in their Engineering notebook, so long as I could still find the evidence that the notebook was truly an engineering tool (not just a diary); but every piece of superfluous information would distract me as I tried to find the pertinent information, and would (subconsciously at least) make any engineering information omissions more troubling.

1st Bottom Line: From a Think Award standpoint, you make a better engineering notebook by better satisfying the requirements outlined in the Game Manual.

2nd Bottom Line: I agree that every FTC project plan should include a budget, and a few other items.

Blake

[team F.T.C 4240]

Blake,

In the manual it says "The Engineering Notebook is also a good place to discuss and show team activities that are done throughout the team’s season. These activities can be placed in a separate section of the Engineering Notebook or chronologically within the design pages."

To me that means if say we went to an Engineering facility for tour to get ideas of what we could use in the robots design, or the vast amount of community service the team does, it shouldn't just be thrown away or confuse people by have three or four notebooks.

The manual says "Document EVERYTHING!!", not throw out everything but prototypes, CAD, building process and programming, ect. Connect Award (first sentence): "This award is given to the team that most connected with their local community and the engineering community", if you leave out what I said earlier then how will the judges know you did anything at all for the community or reached out to engineering company's, there is more then enough space in the engineering notebook for a small section about community service, ect. It is also a lot easier to keep track of one notebook apposed to two or three.

The team's notebook isn't perfect and it doesn't need to be, in my mind it just needs to get the information over to the judges of how we went through our whole year (so far) as a team, the team spends a lot of time on the engineering notebook documenting everything, not only to be eligible for awards but it is also very good for past references and is a nice reminder of the past year.

We document everything, but that is just my team. If your team wants to only document specific things its up to you, every team is different and like a team there is no robot/notebook alike, which is the great thing about FTC is there is so much creativity. Write the engineering notebook the way it seems fit for your team or however you want, but the best thing to do is read the game manual (section 5 for the engineering notebook).

~Derrick

[gblake]

Originally Posted by team F.T.C 4240

Blake,

In the manual it says "The Engineering Notebook is also a good place to discuss and show team activities that are done throughout the team’s season. These activities can be placed in a separate section of the Engineering Notebook or chronologically within the design pages."

To me that means if say we went to an Engineering facility for tour to get ideas of what we could use in the robots design, or the vast amount of community service the team does, it shouldn't just be thrown away or confuse people by have three or four notebooks.

The manual says "Document EVERYTHING!!", not throw out everything but prototypes, CAD, building process and programming, ect. Connect Award (first sentence): "This award is given to the team that most connected with their local community and the engineering community", if you leave out what I said earlier then how will the judges know you did anything at all for the community or reached out to engineering company's, there is more then enough space in the engineering notebook for a small section about community service, ect. It is also a lot easier to keep track of one notebook apposed to two or three.

The team's notebook isn't perfect and it doesn't need to be, in my mind it just needs to get the information over to the judges of how we went through our whole year (so far) as a team, the team spends a lot of time on the engineering notebook documenting everything, not only to be eligible for awards but it is also very good for past references and is a nice reminder of the past year.

We document everything, but that is just my team. If your team wants to only document specific things its up to you, every team is different and like a team there is no robot/notebook alike, which is the great thing about FTC is there is so much creativity. Write the engineering notebook the way it seems fit for your team or however you want, but the best thing to do is read the game manual (section 5 for the engineering notebook).

~Derrick

Derrick,

I'm not writing about your team, I'm writing to any team.

There is no doubt that the Game Manual includes these words:

12. The Engineering Notebook is also a good place to discuss and show team activities that are done throughout the team’s season. These activities can be placed in a separate section of the Engineering Notebook or chronologically within the design pages.

So, I think we agree that putting non-engineering material in a section of the notebook that is clearly separated from the Engineering material is one good option. Notice that this item doesn't say that the Engineering Notebook is the best place for the non-engineering material; and also notice that the other items in the list discuss putting engineering material into the Engineering Notebook; and also notice that the Think Award criteria (and other "engineering" awards that use the notebook) ignore the non-engineering material (so be careful not to let it get in the way of the engineering material).

That game manual item quoted above is the 12th item in a list of 13 items that appear under this heading:

The FIRST Tech Challenge Engineering Notebook is a complete documentation of your team’s Robot design. This documentation should include sketches, discussions and team meetings, design evolution, processes, the “Aha’s!”, obstacles, and each team member’s thoughts throughout the journey for the entire season. A new notebook should be created for each new season. So here are the guidelines:

The "Document everything" admonition also appears under that heading. It's pretty clear that teams are admonished to document everything that is "engineering", and it is less clear that they are admonished to document all non-engineering activities/information too. In particular the Think Award asks judges to use teams' Engineering Notebooks to evaluate engineering materials, not non-engineering materials. I don't think any other award criteria ask the judges to use the Engineering Notebook as a source of anything other than engineering information.

No one said to throw out anything. A couple of people did recommend putting engineering into Engineering Notebooks, and recording/submitting other information elsewhere.

I believe Awards like the Connect Award are judged using information gained during interviews and perhaps by referring to simple printed material given to judges during interviews. I don't think the Connect and similar awards are expected to be based on information judges have to find in the Engineering Notebook.

Judges have very little time to spend on any single team or topic, when looking for evidence to back up a team's assertion or a judge's assessment. Based on years of professional experience, and on recent similar experiences in STEM robotics judging, I'll assure you that it is far easier to have simple separate submissions from a team about how they satisfied engineering and non-engineering awards' criteria, than it is to have one integrated submission that puts everything in chronological order. A single submission that contains separate sections for each information category is a compromise, but it can not be simultaneously used/shared by separate groups of judges.

Trust me, judges are smart enough not to become confused by clearly labeled, separate documents/submissions.

You and your colleagues are obviously proud of how you choose to organize your team's records. I'm glad about that; and I have no doubt that each one makes a nice momento for the teams archives.

However, when giving other teams advice about how to make their Engineering notebooks better, I recommend being careful to explain that your advice might be more about how to make a better Season Diary (that happens to be in the Engineering Notebook); than it is about creating an Engineering Notebook that better satisfies the central thrust of the Engineering Notebook Guidelines and Think Award Criteria, and is consequently easily evaluated against those criteria. Those two subjects overlap; but they are not the same. Everyone involved in the process of advising others has a duty to be clear about those sorts of differences.

Blake

[team F.T.C 4240]

Originally Posted by gblake

Derrick,

I'm not writing about your team, I'm writing to any team.

when giving other teams advice about how to make their Engineering notebooks better, I recommend being careful to explain that your advice might be more about how to make a better Season Diary (that happens to be in the Engineering Notebook); than it is about creating an Engineering Notebook that better satisfies the central thrust of the Engineering Notebook Guidelines and Think Award Criteria, and is consequently easily evaluated against those criteria. Those two subjects overlap; but they are not the same. Everyone involved in the process of advising others has a duty to be clear about those sorts of differences.

Blake

If you read my first post "The main things we put in is our first drawings, prototypes, and how we got to our finished product, this year we will have a picture book of our prototypes instead of bringing one or two of them into judging. Another thing is to put page markers/tabs into the engineering notebook to mark the more important pages/the pages you want the judges to see most." Also I posted what has worked for us in FTC, and what I thought would be helpful to other teams. The reason I am on "chiefdelphi" in the first place is to help answer questions and help teams.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by team F.T.C 4240

If you read my first post "The main things we put in is our first drawings, prototypes, and how we got to our finished product, this year we will have a picture book of our prototypes instead of bringing one or two of them into judging. Another thing is to put page markers/tabs into the engineering notebook to mark the more important pages/the pages you want the judges to see most." Also I posted what has worked for us in FTC, and what I thought would be helpful to other teams. The reason I am on "chiefdelphi" in the first place is to help answer questions and help teams.

Sounds good - You may have the last word - Between the two of us and the other comments, teams should have a good set of opinions to chew on.

It was good to see you guys at St Louis last year - Best of luck this season!

Blake

[team F.T.C 4240]

I agree, and good luck this season!!! I bet we will see some crazy designs this year (or at lest I hope so).

[Sisterg975]

Excellent discussion on the notebook. We have a new (third) team this year; I'm not sure they have as good a grip on the notebook as the other two teams we mentor have.

Thanks SO much for the enlightened discussion!

[PhilBot]

Originally Posted by Sisterg975

Thanks SO much for the enlightened discussion!

I agree!!!!

To Derrick..... You Rock!!!

Not so much because I totally agree with all your points, but because I LOVE the passion and clarity with which you presented them. You've come a LONG way buddy!!!

My own point of view...

Our team's Engineering Notebooks could afford to have MORE Engineering in them... Some more calculations, analysis, testing, results and projections. No question.

Having said that, if a team is not comfortable/able/ready for that, then there is still a LOT of value recording all that other usefull stuff (Photo record of designs, field trips, business plans, community outreach) just because these are all things that an excellent Engineer should be concerned with.

Too many Engineers (like myself) are not prepared to transition from Basic Engineering to Project Management or Starting their own Businesses because they did not get any training in the Use and Business application of their basic craft.

Does a Engineering Notebook stuffed with other related information stand up as a "pure example" of what an Engineer should produce while doing Engineering? No. But is it a great exercise in Product development? Sure is...

So...

Will it guarentee a Think Award win? Maybe not. But is it a valuable outcome of the FTC program? *I* think so.

In our own experience (at regional competitions anyway) the Judges tend to see that. At the national level the competitionn is much tougher, so the more "Pure" Engineering Notebooks seem to do better.

Phil.