CAD Drawings

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by fmcgee1110

Do we need CAD drawings.

You are not required anywhere in the rules as a general rule to have CAD drawings of your robot. Sponsors may ask for them, however. For example, 2220 is sponsored by PTC, who asks for updates and CAD files of our robot every year.

[John Retkowski]

CAD drawings are not necessary, but it can be very useful to create a part in the program so that you are able to visualize the piece. It can also be referred to if you CAD the whole robot exactly, for mesurements and the BOM, although getting that degree of acuracy can take some time. And some teams may not have enough man power.

[Tamster]

Originally Posted by John Retkowski

CAD drawings are not necessary, but it can be very useful to create a part in the program so that you are able to visualize the piece. It can also be referred to if you CAD the whole robot exactly, for mesurements and the BOM, although getting that degree of acuracy can take some time. And some teams may not have enough man power.

That's so true. Especially for working on the BOM - definitely saves time to have a visual reference at your fingertips.

Also, having CAD drawings can be very useful when talking to judges, pit scouters, and other people interested in learning about your robot. This comes into play very well during competitions when the robot is being worked on and parts of it are out of view. I also noticed that having a CAD drawing to look at helps me explain how things work on the robot. I'm not sure if this is true for everyone, but the drawings are still useful.

All in all, as was stated earlier, CAD drawings are not explicitly needed, but if you have the time and ability to make them, they can really help.

I hope this helps,

--T. K. "JankyWinduist"

[protoserge]

You are not required to have CAD drawings, nor do you need to use CAD to design your robot.

[TedG]

Cad drawings are not required, but I see this as part of the whole "inspiring technology" thing that FIRST is about!

We model our robot in Inventor as we are building it, and create/print drawings for machining parts.

Before we cut up too much metal right after kick off, we have the basic model created which we build on. We try to have the "big stuff" on the model so we know what we're bulding. This is a huge help for checking clearances, making brackets and motor mounts etc. It also helps with explaining things and visualizing.

The bottom line is, in real-world engineering, drawings/models are designed and created before things get built, and so should we.. if you have the ability (IMO).

Makes it much easier to see what you're building before you build it...

[eedoga]

You do not need CAD to design or build a robot. We use it pretty religiously. We find that generating a CADD model in inventor before building the robot saves us a lot of time and money, and we end up with a better looking robot. We can also eliminate kids who miss a lot of meetings walking in and not knowing what is going on, or why things are the way they are. If a kid misses meetings, they can just consult the CADD files, and look at the robot. Comparing the two they know what needs to be done.

There is also something really nice about knowing what to buy, and how much of it you need. We have saved a ton of money this way. Before CADDing our robots we would literally guess about what might work, spend money, and then find out we were wrong after modifying the part in some stupid way so that we couldn't return it. Our first year cadding the robot I could have told you how much money we would spend total and have been right within about $100 during the second week of build season.

Here is a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU3_N_emoks

Hope this helps.

Edoga