How do you feel about how the Autodesk award winners were decided?

[Daniel Brim]

I don't like student voting.

I don't like an all-Autodesk vote, either.

Perhaps it is time for Autodesk to kick voting up a notch. I want the feedback (and votes) from people who use the respective software (Inventor and 3DSmax) for their job/career. I want to know how people who are closer to a real design process (read: engineers) to decide which design process/CAD integration is the best.

In short, I think that the awards should be decided by Engineers (Inventor award) and Animators who use the software in question to judge the entries. Thoughts?

[Evenstar_342]

Originally Posted by BMartin 234

What if, on Autodesk FIRSTbase, the main contact of each team designated one student to score the Autodesk Inventor award? This student could score each of the top five entries like Autodesk scores them. The downside here, though, is that you still have the chance that the student picks the entry with the most outstanding graphics.

In addition, we could include the opinion of Autodesk as well. Autodesk could take their score and add it to the average scores of all the teams. The team with the highest combined score would be declared the winner.

In this way, Autodesk gets 50% of the input on the winner, and FIRST Robotics students get the other 50%.

Anyway, it's just an idea.

BMartin,

That's a really cool idea! I would think that the Autodesk portion of the award score would outweigh the guy who picks the entry with the "outstanding graphics". Out of curiosty, since we seem to have an Autodesk person watching this thread, can anyone explain why the award judging was changed? It just caught everyone on my team, at least, by total surprise and there are so many rumors and theories floating around, I'm sure Autodesk would like to get the official version out there.

[Padre_Vez]

At first I thought the voting would be a poularity contest. So I thought our team would not come in first. However maybe your right and just alot of people like our team.

Anyway thanks to all the teams that voted for us at nationals, and if anyone has any questions I would love to help.

[Lil' Lavery]

I'm in favor of the split-scoring system. Autodesk first selects 5/10 finalists for each award. The Autodesk judges each get an input, and the voters/peer scorers get a certain input. The weighting of each input is evaluated by Autodesk.
The criteria should be technical in nature, but beautiful graphics, marketing, and detail should play a role as well. In reality, you don't only have to create your design, you have to market it. Your design may be perfect, but if a/your company doesn't want to make it, it's worthless.

[Robert Thacker-]

I think that's a good idea that Daniel Brim suggested. The problem is that the top guys in the nation who use the program professionally may not care about FIRST and may not wnat to find the time to take place in judging. It's a harsh reality that Autodesk may have to face. I have no idea about animation, but I know Inventor is usually judged by very well-qualified people. Although knowing what kind of people who judge the awards would be cool. As in what THEY use the program for and perhaps some examples of their CAD work. (I'm curious if I could possibly top their work too - lol)

[Skute327]

I'm in favor of the split-scoring system. Autodesk first selects 5/10 finalists for each award. The Autodesk judges each get an input, and the voters/peer scorers get a certain input. The weighting of each input is evaluated by Autodesk.
The criteria should be technical in nature, but beautiful graphics, marketing, and detail should play a role as well. In reality, you don't only have to create your design, you have to market it. Your design may be perfect, but if a/your company doesn't want to make it, it's worthless.

the idea of the award is not to try to sell anything. inventor is a program to help design a product not sell it. Agreed, detail and ''pritty colors" are important for the business/ marketing end but in my opinion aren't nessissary to the drawing. i believe the most accurate representation of the team's robot should "win"

[petek]

Originally Posted by Skute327

the idea of the award is not to try to sell anything. inventor is a program to help design a product not sell it. Agreed, detail and ''pritty colors" are important for the business/ marketing end but in my opinion aren't nessissary to the drawing. i believe the most accurate representation of the team's robot should "win"

I don't mean to pick on you, but in my experience there are often times when designs are used to sell a project to a customer. In these cases the presentation is very important, and how well the model conveys the final appearance may be as important as how well it explains basic functions. I see the Inventor Award as a way students can learn these skills and marketing techniques.

A recent case in point: my department provides engineering services for the company's scientific groups and we recently completed the development of a high speed reagent dispenser for the biologists. We worked with the biologists to determine the best device to fill their needs, which included surveying and testing commercial instruments as well as proposing our own proprietary device. That meant that we had to "sell" our device as a design concept vs. actual instruments they could bring in the lab and test.

We were working with an external engineering company who provided basic designs and layouts in AutoCAD 2D format. The biologists found it difficult to grasp the functional concepts that way, so I created Inventor models from the ACAD files, including an animation of the product transport system and a concept model of the overall instrument package. As soon as the biology department leader saw those he went from a tentative and wary "customer" to an enthusiastic supporter of the project. Being able to visualize the instrument in his lab was a very important factor in getting his approval.

By the way, that external engineering company has since begun using Inventor and the project was very successful - providing our biologists with the best solution for their needs and giving the company a competitive advantage in what's know as "high throughput screening".

[Evenstar_342]

I definetly agree that how something looks or is packaged can help make a sucessful engineering product. I think that the controversy (at least in my team), is that the Inventor award is supposed to be for technical excellence. If Autodesk wants to include that a portion of each entry's score is based upon how well they've packaged their design (which I think is a great idea, as the world gets more globalised and more competative, we all should learn some marketing skills), that's fine. I think what we're having a problem with is that we're not sure whether we should be marketing our design, or even what criteria we're truly being judged on during peer voting, since everyone has a different set of criteria.

[Daniel_H]

Judging Criteria

Judges will review all entries. Five finalists will be selected to advance to peer voting.

In scoring your entry, judges will address specific criteria:

Robot Design 50 points
Technical Expertise 30 points
Presentation of final design 20 points

TOTAL POINTS: 100 points

This was taken from FIRSTbase website, I believe that's the way Inventor Award should be judged by other people too, not only for the judging of the top 5.
The only way to judge properly these 3 areas is looking carefully at the Inventor file and reading all the website that the team developed, but to do that you have to know the software very well.

[JasJ002]

There is no way to make a voting system that is non biased. Even if you were to make one person per team give a score for every other team, what would stop a team from simply getting every sister team to give them hundreds and everybody else zero's. I'm not saying that cheating would be rampant but it is peoples natural instinct to favor themselves or those close to them.

Although you are all looking for a perfect system, there is none. As long as we know how the award will be judged, teams will always be able to adapt their award to fit the criteria.

Also you do want an aesthetically pleasing design. I know for a fact that the Air Force uses programs like Inventor to prepare their Alpha prototyping. This is how you sell a product, because you cannot simply make a 2 million dollar aircraft to show off.

Overall it shouldn't matter how the award is decided, it will never be 100% fair, but this is still by far an award with one of the most spelled out definitions every year, you know exactly what to look for in a submission.

[Robert Thacker-]

Originally Posted by JasJ002

There is no way to make a voting system that is non biased. Even if you were to make one person per team give a score for every other team, what would stop a team from simply getting every sister team to give them hundreds and everybody else zero's. I'm not saying that cheating would be rampant but it is peoples natural instinct to favor themselves or those close to them.

Although you are all looking for a perfect system, there is none. As long as we know how the award will be judged, teams will always be able to adapt their award to fit the criteria.

Also you do want an aesthetically pleasing design. I know for a fact that the Air Force uses programs like Inventor to prepare their Alpha prototyping. This is how you sell a product, because you cannot simply make a 2 million dollar aircraft to show off.

Overall it shouldn't matter how the award is decided, it will never be 100% fair, but this is still by far an award with one of the most spelled out definitions every year, you know exactly what to look for in a submission.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[Mike200]

Concerning AVA,

I'm a little tired of the voting system changing every year. Our team has submitted into the AVA for three years now, and each year we've had to submit or judge the awards differently. Last year, Autodesk turned to online voting, which ended up as a disaster in the regionals we attended, with teams being called to vote at the event and many not voting at all. This year, we had to submit the animation via firstbase, which ended in another batch of problems. Our school server blocks all upload sites, and when we tried uploading from different locations, the upload would frequently fail.

Personally, I believe the best way to decide would be a combination of last year and '05. Teams would only be able to submit to one regional, the teams would vote on these animations during the competition, the winners of the regionals, along with a handful of other team animations would then move on to the finals, which will be judged solely by Autodesk.

The reason why I feel this way is because I think that online voting just doesn't work. Most people and teams don't know that Firstbase exists and when they try to register, they have to go through a long and arduous process to join and vote.

[Koko Ed]

I wish the adults were allowed to vote too.
Our opionions don't matter?

[Steve W]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

I wish the adults were allowed to vote too.
Our opionions don't matter?

Not when you can't spell.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Steve W

Not when you can't spell.

It's not my fault CD dumped the spel chek!