CAD?

[Marc S.]

If you are starting fresh, I would recommend trying out Solidworks. I like it better than Inventor and, at least where I live, there's a lot more real world demand for it.

Look online for tutorials. Many FRC teams have put up FRC specific cad tutorials that are very helpful (973 RAMP being the first one to come to mind).

Another thing to keep in mind, is that a team sould never restrict students to just the "CAD team". Make sure that the people deciding how "it" fits together have experience putting "it" together. The best practice you can get is sitting down with your machinists/builders (they don't necessarily have to be the ones cadding but it will benefit you if they know how) and design and build a prototype robot in the off - season. Anyone can put up a CAD image on cd, it takes skill to design a robot effectively with your resources in mind. Doing it in the off season lets you learn from your mistakes with out hurting your team's productivity.

If you have any solidworks specific questions feel free to pm me, and of course others who post cad specific details on cheif.