Is CAD essential to all teams?

[BotDesigner]

I do believe it essential that every FRC team should do some CAD. I am design lead on a somewhat low resource team and without CAD I don't know where we would be. CAD allows you to simulate mechanisms and find interference long before you start to build them. It is critical for designing things with low tolerances (think about keeping things within 15in of your frame perimeter or figuring out the necessary dimensions for a scaler).

Also, CAD is nice because you can easily do it outside of the workshop. My team has very limited meeting times,so I do most of my CAD work at home. We then get to spend our meetings manufacturing.

This year, about a week after bag and tag, we decided to modify our robot into a defensive shield thing. Although the robot was in the bag we were able to figure out (using CAD) a way to attach a extendible 70 inch wide 54 inch tall shield to bumper supports already on the robot. It took less than an hour to attach it at competition because we knew exactly every hole that had to be drilled and bolt that needed to be put in. There is know way we could have done that without using CAD.

Engineering drawings can be useful but you CAD in general is much easier and simpler to use when it comes to mechanisms. My advice is to find a CAD software and learn to use it. Try designing some robots this offseason and post them here. You will get great feedback.