Are the three day builds affecting designs?

[chrisfl]

I am the lead student designer for my team and I modelled our shooter off of a 2008 design and our catapult looks nothing like what we modelled it off of. In the Suffield Shakedown almost every robot looked like twins. The few that stood out had huge targets on their backs. My team was able to create mostly a great design that in no way was like the RI3D robots. I believe the RI3D is a mockery of FIRST and ruins the original intentions of the FIRST program. RI3D makes students believe that they can just copy designs and do little thinking. RI3D really shouldn't make videos showing, in detail, how every function works so the teams that do copy have some kind of figuring out to do.