YMTC: Bluateam Uses Old Pixels

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

Regardless if this is kosher on the moral side, theres no rules against designing.

On the contrary, section 8.3.4 Fabrication Schedule does address designing. It specifically makes the described situation illegal.

Originally Posted by The Manual

...completing detailed dimensioned drawings of parts, and any actual fabrication of any hardware items intended to go on the actual competition ROBOT is prohibited outside of the approved fabrication periods.

This is the rule being broken here:

Originally Posted by <R28>

During the Build Season: During the period between the Kick-off and ROBOT shipment deadline, teams are to design and fabricate all the COMPONENTS and MECHANISMS required to complete their ROBOT.

A part fabricated using last year's CAD file was not designed during the Build Season.

[Elgin Clock]

Alan is 100% correct. Whether or not every team follows this is a huge grey area but the intent of the rule is to keep every team whether it be your 10 year teams, or 1st year teams on the same playing field when it comes to making parts.

Not everyone even has CNC capabilities, so I'm not even sure if a proposal to voluntarily make your robot parts available to every team as a CAD file from year to year would be allowed as a form of "Commercially Available Off the (Internet) Source"??

One can only speculate what digital media restrictions will be in place in the future as FIRST continues to grow in the digital age.

Just as the world is fueled in the debate as to who "owns" digital media such as music files, this could become an even more grey area than is now.

I think the rule as written currently is just meant to be a banner about the theory of "shortcutting" the system for older teams and to (as I stated before) keep the field level for all participants.

While every intention is made to do this, Dean himself has said in the past that FIRST is not supposed to or meant to be fair for everyone involved, as it is a microcosm of the "real world" of engineering, but all attempts to be fair are tried by FIRST with the rules in place that all teams must adhere to.

If in the future a team was allowed to use their old CAD parts (legally written into the rulebook) with the blessing of the all powerful and knowing Manual if they shared their parts, I'm willing to bet most teams with extensive design hostory within their teams over the years (CAD, blueprints, etc...) would jump on that bandwagon and share knowledge in order to allow this shortcut.

I know we would be willing to share our information if this was allowed, and actually have in the past even without this additional incentive.
But maybe, just maybe that is the real test of this limitation as it's written now.
Not to share things just as a trade-off to benefit from it somehow, but so that your team is the position to give knowledge more than to receive at times.

Thoughts?

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

On the contrary, section 8.3.4 Fabrication Schedule does address designing. It specifically makes the described situation illegal.



This is the rule being broken here:



A part fabricated using last year's CAD file was not designed during the Build Season.

Alan, I stand corrected. I admit I had not read that rule.

Illegal...

[JesseK]

Well, we are the officials, but we still have to go with technicalities. I only knew these rules because we had to nitpick this year to ensure we were following guidelines in order to use pre-season prototyped ideas for the drive train for our end-result bot. Everything has to be re-created if you did anything custom pre-season. While we all want to see bluateam succeed, they have several other avenues to succeed other than a left-turning robot.

Honestly, Bluateam could find a contingency wheel for now and figure out their ProE licensing issues. This would allow their wonderful KABOOM device to still go Kaboom Kaboom (Penguin Christmas Caper anyone?) while they fixed their other issues. Usually wheels are not so close to everything else that they require extensive integration for spacing and you can always use the Skyway wheels with some ridiculous manipulation for whatever temporary setup.

There are always 2 ways to solve a problem; just because one refuses to figure the second solution out when the first solution has a problem doesn't mean he/she gets to bend the rules.

[dlavery]

I think Alan has it right. When Bluamentor and Bluastudent saw the Bluascreen-of-death, they needed to start singing the blues. To raise their spirits before they start over, they might take in a Bluaman show before returning to the Bluashop.


-dave



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