How much planning goes into your robot?

[Jupee]

We spent two weeks brainstorming and cadding our ideas. We made every nut and bolt on the robot and had everything just as it would be on the bot. It helped oh so much when we had to send out parts to be made b/c the ppl could look at the sketch and know what they were doing. It may be tedious work, but it is definitely worth it to spend the time making every part--it saves a lot of time and chaos in the end. We even had our bot finished like five days BEFORE we shipped this year!! That never happens. We were able to practice with it, which definitely helped.