[FTC]: I'm irritated.

[Joe G.]

It sounds like you're looking for a CAD program. Autodesk inventor, and the Tetrix part library, can be accessed through students.autodesk.com

[carl.nartia]

Thank you, I'll get to that ASAP.

[Madison]

FTC teams are also given licenses of Creo, another CAD package. Inventor is probably easier to use, though.

[gotrobot?]

Carl - As irritated and frustrated as you may be now you'll probably find yourself equally frustrated with the cold, bracing jump into CAD. I suggest you take a two-prong approach: have your team get up to speed with CAD but while that's happening do some research and study real-world arm/lifting mechanisms from industry. Then do a brainstorm and see if there are ideas worth combining and prototyping. Stay away from the TETRIX kit for now and just build 2D and 3D scale models with cardboard, push pins, and tape. There's a lot of learning from this approach and it will save your team lot of trial and error once the engineers move to the TETRIX platform.

[mplanchard]

When you are first starting in CAD it is a good idea to look at models that have come before. Luckily Pitsco uses SolidWorks and I was able to create "Mantis" with Tetrix parts.

If you are looking for SolidWorks CAD modeling go to www.solidworks.com/studentsponsorship and register to get your team SolidWorks.

Then go to http://blogs.solidworks.com/teacher/...challange.html to download Mantis and learn how to add a file folder in SolidWorks so you have all your library parts directly in SolidWorks - just easier. Review the assembly structure. A good assembly is broken down into smaller subassembies.

Marie

[carl.nartia]

Originally Posted by mplanchard

When you are first starting in CAD it is a good idea to look at models that have come before. Luckily Pitsco uses SolidWorks and I was able to create "Mantis" with Tetrix parts.

If you are looking for SolidWorks CAD modeling go to www.solidworks.com/studentsponsorship and register to get your team SolidWorks.

Then go to http://blogs.solidworks.com/teacher/...challange.html to download Mantis and learn how to add a file folder in SolidWorks so you have all your library parts directly in SolidWorks - just easier. Review the assembly structure. A good assembly is broken down into smaller subassembies.

Marie

Where do I register my team once I click on the 1st link?

[JesseK]

Carl: Simplify your robot. Massively. Now.

Do it.

If you're frustrated already, you're in for even more pain. CAD will help, but it's not a silver bullet. Simplify things down to where they're manageable without CAD under nominal stress. This game doesn't NEED any one specific design to be ridiculously successful.

[carl.nartia]

Originally Posted by Joe G.

It sounds like you're looking for a CAD program. Autodesk inventor, and the Tetrix part library, can be accessed through students.autodesk.com

I'm downloading the free AutoCAD program. How do I get the Tetrix parts in the AutoCAD?