How do YOU start designing?

[Ryan Foley]

heres how 350 does it
1) learn the game.
2) everyone discusses what the best strategy is for the game
3) split into groups (everyone is involved) to come up with a few different designs
4) choose a design (based upon which is the simplest to make, which would work the best, etc)
5) give the design to the mechanical team, who then does what I call "detailed design". Detailed design is just what it sounds like. The mech team takes the basic design and figures out exactly how to build it. They make to scale drawings, labeling each part, including every measurement, etc. Basically the build the robot on paper (or on the computer).
6) After detailed design, the mech team, captain, and assistant captain go through it once more, checking to make sure nothings missing. Then we start building