Your Help is NEEDED!

[Chris Herold]

Autodesk Awards Finalists Announced! Your Help is NEEDED

On April 4, the finalists for both Autodesk Awards were announced. Congratulations to teams 234, 341, 617 and 1764 for reaching the Autodesk Inventor Award final and teams 116, 135, 342, 867 and 868 for reaching the Autodesk Visualization Award finals. Congratulations also to all the other teams that participated in either of the awards for it is a truly remarkable achievement to submit an entry to this competition.
Because not many persons actually know about it. I will shortly describe the awards:
The Autodesk Inventor Design Award celebrates outstanding achievements of students in engineering, as well as mechanical design of the robot. In order to participate, the team has to create a model of the robot in the program Autodesk Inventor. In the ideal case, the complete robot is created and tested in Inventor before even the first screw is touched. Since the modeling of the robots can be quite complex, the participation in this award is remarkable. The award is just given out at the Championship in Atlanta and not at the regional competitions.

The Autodesk Visualization Award is celebrating outstanding achievements of students in animation and creation of video sequences to a gives theme. This year's theme was to improve the life in your community. For the submission the program 3Ds Max is used to animate various components and many, many hours of work are in one of the 30 sec masterpieces. Unlike the Autodesk Inventor Award, this award is given out at the regional competitions as well.

The specialty
Here is what's so special about both awards: Professionals of business and industry select five finalists for both awards out of all submissions. Those finalists appear on the website www.autodesk.com/firstbase . After the finalists are announced a peer voting is opened. This means that all FIRST student members can participate and vote for their favorite submission for the Autodesk Awards. This is very important and many persons should ideally vote for the submissions.
On the Firstbase website, the information for other teams that one was able to submit were very limited, therefore I would to use this thread to give all teams the chance to give the voters a little more insight about their video/robot and what makes their submission so special. I send a personal message to members of all teams in the finals!

Here is how you vote:

1. Visit the website www.autodesk.com/firstbase
2. Click on FIRST Robotics Competition
3. Select "Register Now"
4. Fill out the form. You'll be asked for phone number and address
but don't worry if you don't select to be updated on Autodesk
products, they won't bother you! It is, of course for free!
5. Receive the registration email and follow the link
6. On the upcoming window you have to select "Student member"! That
is important in order to be able to vote!
7. Type in the team password which is defined by the team's main contact.
8. After the registering is completed, log in and go to "My Team"
9. On the right side you will find the "My things to do" list, go to
the point "Vote for Your Favorite - Autodesk Design Competition
<http://firstbasefrc.autodesk.com/?nd=vote>"
10. Select the "Vote now for the Inventor/Visualization Design Competition"
11. Go to the design submissions
12. Chose the model you like best and click on "Vote for this team"
13. Confirm your choice for the team and that's it!
14. Pass the word on to other FIRST student members!

Please practice Gracious Professionalism and vote for the submission, not the team, you like best.