Getting kid excited about CAD

[Sperkowsky]

1- Does your team have a dedicated CAD team?
Sort of. This year we will have 1 member who is going to continuously CAD throughout the whole season and then 4-5 members who are just going to CAD for the first few weeks and then go into building. The dedicated CAD member will work on new upgrades, stress testing, and making the CAD model pretty for renders.

2- What is your ratio of CAD students/total team members for your team?
Ours is quite high. Out of 25-30 students about 8 could CAD if they had to and we will have 6 or 7 CADing during the season.

3- Are the students doing CAD also part of the built team?
Answered this earlier but yes some. I am the build lead but I almost exclusively CAD in the beginning. We have a prototyping lead to handle build members during that time but I am not involved in it.

4- What is your "rules" around draw before your build, or build than draw....?
We CAD everything first and a lot of times before we start CADing we are sketching stuff on a wipe board. We don't have the money to make very many mistakes.

5- Any "perks" for being on that team?
I always say to members if you want the full engineering experience join the CAD team. You definitely learn the most in that sub team on the mechanical side and overall its a really fulfilling job. This year the CAD team will be working in our new clean room which is connected to our main room. The clean room will have a fridge and microwave so I guess one perk will be quickest access to food.

6- What is your team strategy to promote CAD within your team?
If you want to design robots learn CAD. From there I really have not had to push members to learn.