Is CAD essential to all teams?

[Jash_J]

Saying CAD is essential in order to reach "the next level" is quite vague. There are many things that can be done in order to successfully have a 6 week build season but it starts from the ground up. Having the skills to CAD itself can help significantly, however it does not mean you will be successful. A good example of that is our team's robot in 2015. The entire robot was designed using CAD; however we failed to prototype effectively which ultimately lead us to believe that we could do more than we could.

If I could suggest one key aspect to build season that most teams should be capable of doing, it would be prototyping. Prototyping not only allows you to determine which mechanism would be best to solve that year’s game problem, but it also allows you to refine the idea until you have the best iteration of it. If then, you would like to CAD the prototypes and integrate them into one large robot that would be ideal, as you would find any integration problems before you reach your build phase. However, please realize that if you begin to CAD without any preliminary model to base your designs off of, it will be extremely tough to have a successful build season as there may be problems that occur once you have built the CAD model of your robot.

[Abhishek R]

No, it is not. 624 took a break from CAD in 2009 before returning to it in 2016. If you don't have any experience, it'll take time (maybe 2 years, one for you to get trained in a software of your choice and then another offseason to train others and develop an organization process - there are lots of resources to help with this, specifically 973 and 1114 have some good things to look at on their YouTube channels) to build up a system of using CAD effectively, so in the short term it will probably be better for you to stick with paper and pencil drawings with extensive dimensions. But eventually, as your team grows, your systems become more complex, and your resources expand - CAD will become a very useful tool for you to unlock a lot of potential.

[Mechvet]

Let's take a wider look at the question.

CAN you make a competitive, impressive robot without CAD, and still inspire students to pursue a career in STEM? Yes.

However, I firmly believe in not only inspiring the path into STEM, but also sending students armed with as many useful tools as possible. If you were to try to take a product to any reasonable production team on a napkin sketch, or even a simple paper sketch, you wouldn't get very far (excluding companies with drafters/modelers on hand for precisely this).

[cad321]

Not necessary but highly useful. One tool that I will be using next year to help teach our freshmen cad is 1114's solidworks tutorials.

I binge watched them all one night and found that they would be extremely useful in teaching new students CAD from the ground up.

[pmangels17]

CAD is definitely a useful tool, and through FIRST you can access the industry standard programs with a ton of packages available for no cost to you or your team. Learning CAD can be a daunting task, but the best way to go about it is to download the program, watch some tutorials (973 RAMP has good videos, so does the SolidWorks website), and do a lot of CAD. You can only get good at the program by using it a lot. If you want to learn CAD, my best advice to you is to just design a bunch of stuff, and once you have a better idea of how productive you and your team are with CAD, you can make a more informed decision on whether or not to use it during the build season.

EDIT: I personally believe that, if you use CAD productively and efficiently, with sensible designs, it is a fantastic resource, and for teams that want to "take it to the next level," CAD is not an absolute necessity, but it is definitely encouraged.

[jamesmcip]

It definitely helps any team out, as it can save lots of valuable build time to have a step by step plan with all dimensions laid out, especially if there are a lot of intricate mechanisms in place that must be accurate.

However, one mistake a lot of teams make (ours included) is using CAD instead of actual prototyping, which can create a lot of headaches after the parts are actually manufactured.

Also, in regards to actually learning the software, everything about it is surprisingly intuitive and you will be surprised what you can make. I recommend designing simple assemblies at first and practicing all constraints to learn how they work, then tackle something like designing a previous year's robot to practice for the actual build season.

[ASmith1675]

CAD is merely a tool. When used in effective combination with prototyping and effective game analysis it can help to raise your capabilities.

Designing a robot completely within a CAD program will allow you to see issues and interferences in 3d space that you may not have accounted for with a design in your head, or even on paper sometimes. The more detailed the CAD model, the less likely you'll run in to these type of issues while building.

To make full use of these advantages requires a slight change in thinking (in my opinion). While simply building things in a computer may not feel like much is getting done, by properly planning out where everything is going to fit, it reduces the time to put everything together. This might mean you don't have ANY parts for your robot for week three (or later sometimes).

The other thing that needs to be taken into account is the manufacturing capabilities of your team. If you don't have access to a mill (manual or CNC) you may have to account for the lower accuracy with which a part can be manufactured. If you have a sheet metal sponsor, you may be able to have parts cut and bent to very high precision. These issues are the ones that are often most difficult to account for. (Can't tell you how many times I've thought of a design that would be difficult/impossible to manufacture given the facilities and resources of the team that I am working with).

CAD is just a part of the equation, though arguably a big one. Being able to effectively analyze the game (to pick the right mechanisms to build), and prototype effectively (to verify your "theory" designs work in the real world), also play a critical role. Can you build an effective robot without CAD? Definitely. I do believe that becoming more proficient with CAD will tend to increase the consistency of robot builds year after year (meaning fewer of the "our robot didn't do what we wanted" years).

The other posters in this thread have provided some excellent resources to get started. Just digging in and messing around with the programs is a great way to learn.

[cadandcookies]

I'll answer both the title question and the OP's question.

1: Is CAD essential to all teams?

No. Not even close. CAD is a great tool, but you can run a successful FRC team (and build a competitive FRC robot) without CAD.

2: Is CAD the next needed step in order for us to become successful?

Possibly. I think it can be hugely valuable for a team to learn CAD, whether you have mentors in it or not. Be aware that you are in for a slog if you don't have any mentors coming into learning CAD-- when you are learning CAD, you are learning a new language, one that translates your thoughts into shapes on a screen instead of words on a page or audio signals. If you don't have someone who already speaks that language, you are going to figure out a lot of stuff on your own. Like others have mentioned, you're looking at a couple of years to really integrate CAD into your team, especially if not everybody is on board. Don't be afraid to design only parts or subsystems of your robot first-- you don't need to just jump into the deep end.

Best of luck in your future seasons.

Also, ff you choose to learn Creo, feel free to PM me with any questions. While I'm not a professional engineer, I am pretty good at using and teaching Creo for FTC and FRC (by the way, this is a standing offer to just about anyone-- I'm not a complete expert, but designing stuff in Creo is a hobby of mine, so I know a decent bit).

[pmangels17]

Originally Posted by cadandcookies

-snip-
Don't be afraid to design only parts or subsystems of your robot first [in CAD]-- you don't need to just into the deep end.
-snip-

bold added for clarification.

This is also quite true. Designing an entire robot in CAD might not be a feasible or efficient solution for your team. However, stuff like the paper-template-to-make-gussets technique, which requires CAD, could definitely prove useful to a team trying to manufacture more accurately. Also, even rough sketches to find correct geometries or to make sure everything will fit in the space you want can be a huge help to robot construction. Additionally, this will help you get your feet wet and give you real experience with CAD during build season, while at the same time making sure that if CAD is not a solution for your team, you haven't invested so much time in it that other design approaches will no longer work.

[waterbott]

Hey Johns Creek! Its nice to see you guys on Chief Delphi. PM me, I might be able to help you guys out with getting started with CAD.

For us, CAD serves as both a tool and a supplement to design; however, it is important to remember that the quality of design through CAD can only be as good as the users. Our team has been successful without CAD before; however, the quality of design depended highly on having a solid understanding of the mechanics behind the design. In many ways CAD serves a a crutch as it helps us visualize some design problems before they are built; however, without a solid understanding of mechanics, CAD can only help so much.

For our team, we started recently started the process of designing with CAD first before building it. We've had a mixture of successes and failures from this approach. For example, one thing we noticed is that because many of the members dedicated to CAD had little background working in fabrication and assembly, we weren't "designing for manufacturability", meaning that we created designs that were either too complicated to fabricate or difficult to assemble. The convenience of CAD made us overlook some of these problems. One of the successes we had with CAD is that it let us lay out the design before it was built and archive an analyze and changes we make. It proved to be an invaluable tool for visualization as well as easing the fabrication process.

Conclusion to this rambling? Having a successful robot primarily predicates on having a foundational understanding of what you are building, CAD serves as a tool that can only be as good as the person who wields it.

[GreyingJay]

The real answer to your question is: to take your team to the "next level", you need to start working through a proper engineering process.

You can build a robot by assembling the Kit of Parts and then spending the next six weeks trying to improve it. "Ooh, I have an idea!" "Well, that didn't work." "Ooh, I have another idea!"

However, this is not engineering. This is hacking.

Engineering is a disciplined process. There are various definitions, but one I found on Wikipedia lists these steps: research, conceptualization, feasibility assessment, establishing design requirements, preliminary design, detailed design, production planning and tool design, and production.

For FRC, that would look like:

Research/Conceptualization - what is the game? what are all the possible things a robot could do? What are the offensive actions? What are the defensive actions? What are the point values of each? What are the cycle times of each action? What can be done in a 2-minute match? In a 3-robot alliance, how could each robot contribute?

Feasibility Assessment - Of all these things that could be done, what are the easy things? What is harder? Is a harder task worth it? This starts to take into account your team's level of ability and available resources. For example, climbing is a hard task. Maybe it takes 20 seconds. It's worth 10 points. Are there other actions you could do in 20 seconds that could score the same, such as scoring two high goals or damaging the fifth defense?

Design Requirements - Based on all the above, choose what you are going to focus on. Lock this down early to prevent scope creep. For example, we decided early on that our robot would be low bar capable, would shoot low goals, use vision assist for an autonomous low goal mode, be FAST, and be able to handle all the ground obstacles. It was tempting at various stages to try to add a climber, high goal capability. a sally port door opener, etc. But we knew we didn't have the resources to build a Swiss Army Knife on wheels. We kept our focus on the design requirements we agreed on, knowing that if we had time later, we could go back and iterate.

Preliminary design - brainstorming, napkin sketches, prototyping. Now you have a rough idea of exactly what you want to build.

Detailed design - now you nail down exactly how the mechanisms are going to be built, their dimensions, weight, cost, etc.

Where does CAD fit into all this? It helps you with the design stages, and it forces you to actually DO the design stages so you're not tempted to jump right into the shop to start cutting metal without first having a plan. Plus, it is a tool to help you with those design stages so you can play with dimensions and designs without committing to building anything first.

[protoserge]

Originally Posted by GreyingJay

The real answer to your question is: to take your team to the "next level", you need to start working through a proper engineering process.

...

Design Requirements - Based on all the above, choose what you are going to focus on. Lock this down early to prevent scope creep. For example, we decided early on that our robot would be low bar capable, would shoot low goals, use vision assist for an autonomous low goal mode, be FAST, and be able to handle all the ground obstacles. It was tempting at various stages to try to add a climber, high goal capability. a sally port door opener, etc. But we knew we didn't have the resources to build a Swiss Army Knife on wheels. We kept our focus on the design requirements we agreed on, knowing that if we had time later, we could go back and iterate.

If there is anything to take away from this thread, this statement is it. Understand how to set requirements and design to those requirements.

That's good engineering.

[Boltman]

Not essential..can help

We uses CAD mainly to figure out overall bot dimensions for what we wanted to do and bumper placement in first week or so. It was something "to do" until the parts came in.

[Kevin Leonard]

I'll join the chorus here and say it's not essential, but useful.

I'll also add that my use of CAD in FRC has helped me immensely in college. It's a phenomenal tool for solving tight packaging problems (which this year definitely had).

[messer5740]

Is someone willing to direct me to tutorial videos on CAD or to send me an email about how I can incorporate CAD into next year's design?