Build season week 1

[Alan Walker PE]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

I realized that it is not clear from my earlier post, but our week 1 prototyping was primarily for the purpose of determining the "difficulty" of various manipulator approaches. Of course, we always want to remember the key points were from these efforts!

As I read through the responses, I realize that someone should more clearly state that the design process should generally run:

1. Understand the rules (requirements)
2. Plan your strategy (that is: which requirements/rules/scoring opportunities take priority)
3. Prepare two or more designs
4. Evaluate designs against your strategy and priorities; pick a design.
5. As problems emerge, evaluate proposed design changes against your strategy and real-world findings

Most teams should probably be in step 3-5 overall at the end of the first week; we have been both significantly ahead of and significantly behind this in various years. We currently strive to be at step 5 for the drive system and step 3 or 4 for manipulators by the end of week 1.

This is my fourth year in FRC as a mentor and my first post to Chief Delphi. My team started using bike chains last year. Why shouldn't we be using master links? Forgive me if I have not searched on "Master Links" before asking this question. I've never had much success with Chief Delphi. Earlier today, I learned at a local FRC workshop that for the best Chief Delphi results I should login, use the advanced search, and look at the date of the search results.