Is CAD essential to all teams?

[SteveGarward]

CAD is a tool, like pencil and paper. We use it extensively, but we have experience in doing so.

As others have said, work on your process. To me, more important than CAD are, in this order:
1) A solid understanding of your means with which to build, and how to use them effectively
2) A solid game strategy
3) A solid, decisive list of tasks you want your robot to achieve (this comes from working out your gameplay strategy, and does not have to be everything in the game!)
4) Building effective, rapid prototypes of the mechanisms you want to build for the robot (good enough to take final measurements from, to draw up/build real robot assemblies from)
5) Get some of the basics down, and don't reinvent them every year (for example, work out a good drive train, stick with it a few years, so you can focus elsewhere. Then try more complex stuff when you have more experience)
6) Keeping things simple

Once you have that down, you can more easily start to introduce CAD as a tool to help with the design of assemblies and the robot. If you can build working prototypes, you can build better final assemblies, whether you use CAD to help with that or not. If you plan these around readily available components like versa frame and gussets, you can still build well, without CAD.

For example, here is our second prototype of our shooter this year, both built in 1.5 weeks, along with all the others. The first was very, very rough, made from plywood. After some sketches and working out geometry and measurements on paper/whiteboards, we built this which was a much closer-to-final working model. From this, when we had it working just right, we measured it up, then drew up that as a sketch in CAD, to use in final modeling of parts.

Obviously if you have a sponsor cutting parts for you, CAD will be essential. But to me, that comes in time. My list of 'things that come before CAD' is kinda like getting your house in order first.

This also doesn't mean don't learn it - it takes time. Start now. But that doesn't mean it's the solution to every problem. If you are too slow using CAD for build season but are relying on it, you may not have a robot at all..