What to do in the off-season

[Adam.garcia]

Originally Posted by ThaineP

Anyone have any recommendations for CAD software that is free/cheap and you can get a library of FIRST parts for it? (Not demo versions, please) I need to work on my CAD skills in the off-season, and Google Sketchup is just a tiny bit awkward for making robots with, and I haven't found any FIRST parts so far.

There are a few different free CAD programs at no cost for you.
The ones I use are Autodesk Inventor and Solidworks.

You can obtain a free student Autodesk License by signing up at www.students.autodesk.com. After making an account, you can download all the programs for free (If you are a student of course).

You can also obtain a free solidworks license by contacting your local reseller and explain to them that you are from FIRST. They have a special version of solidworks called Solidworks Student Design kit.

Personally, I prefer Solidworks over Inventor. It is much easier to use and much more intuitive.

Originally Posted by Adam.garcia

There are a few different free CAD programs at no cost for you.
The ones I use are Autodesk Inventor and Solidworks.

You can obtain a free student Autodesk License by signing up at www.students.autodesk.com. After making an account, you can download all the programs for free (If you are a student of course).

Thanks a lot, When I went to their website, I thought the "student license" was a six-week trial version for the build season.

I'll have to look that up.


Thaine

[MagiChau]

Originally Posted by ThaineP

Thanks a lot, When I went to their website, I thought the "student license" was a six-week trial version for the build season.

I'll have to look that up.


Thaine

I signed up as a student at Autodesk. It appears you have to be at least 14 and know your school email address for a verification that you are indeed a student. I think you need to renew your license like every 13 months? Of course license ends when you don't go to any school.

[ebarker]

The Autodesk software packages have 13 MONTH licenses. You can easily go all the way through high school plus one month and never ever run out of CAD software.

It is the real deal. Full featured, all day long !!

[waialua359]

Honestly, about 75% of what we do as a team is during the off-season.
-Prototyping
-Service Projects (blood drives, community cleanups)
-Team Building Activities
-Administrative duties
-Funding activities and Partnerships
-Ordering of Materials
-Upgrade/revise/improve our facilities
-400+ person fundraiser luau
-End of Year Banquet
-VEX season-build, tournaments, and workshops
-Off-season events (varies)
-CAD projects
-Robot demonstrations at various events
-FRC sustainability and program management workshops
-Hawaii Regional Planning Committee

And of course, my day job.
-District Grant Coordinator
-Lead Robotics Coordinator and Mentor
-Learning Center Coordinator
-21st CCLC Grant Coordinator
-Technology Cadre Team
-Private foundations Grant Coordinator

And most importantly, full-time Dad!

[Tom Line]

We are doing:

-A game night
-3 major fundraisers
-About a dozen demonstrations
-3 two or three day off season events.
-Can Bus development
-Field dismantling and rebuilding back to a 'standard' field
-Update of our computer systems in the room, along with a rewire of our network
-Tear apart of our practice bot and set-up of a bench controls system so we can start programming on day 1 of the new season
-Rework of our business plan
-Rework of our chairman's award
-Cleanup of our network server (this has been ongoing after we moved from a single 500 gb harddrive to 3 TB of storage with raid backup in a NAS. Slow process with a bunch of 10+ gigabyte movie files.

Those are currently scheduled. We have 18 events currently with team member names against them but no dates applied yet - we're fitting them in as we can.

[HannahF]

Originally Posted by waialua359

Honestly, about 75% of what we do as a team is during the off-season.

Hahaha my team is the same way. The "off"-season is a great time to work on stuff you normally can't accomplish during build and competition seasons. One of the team's mottos is " A new season starts the moment an old season ends, so new ideas never go out of season."

Some of the things the firebirds will be doing this off-season:

-Host an end of Year Team Bonfire
-Learn CAD
-Make buttons (No matter how many we make during build season we always run out )
- Modify past robots to shoot candy
- take modified candy robots to a local 4th of July parade
- Attend Local off-season competitions. (We had a blast at PARC! thanks 222)
-Visit retirement homes with our robot
-Have strategic planning meetings.
-Clean our shop after four months of intense use
-Visit our sponsors and give presentations about our past season.
- Go to local girl scout summer camps and give robotics demonstrations
-work on our website
- Hold a recruitment picnic to meet girls who are interested in joining the team
- Hold seminars to teach incoming members about different aspects of the team
-Start FRC rookie teams
-Hold seminars to teach new FRC rookie teams about robot components and team building
-Pack and send parts to our team in Ghanna
-Start and continue to Mentor FLL teams
-Build an off-season community service robot
-Raise Money for the American Heart Association,(we drive the robots in the Philadelphia Heart Walk.)
-Visit lcoal schools to teach kids about Heart Health with our heart-bot "tinman"
-Hold two fundraisers

Hahaha not to mention the fact that all the rising seniors on the team ( including me ) have to write colleges essays and fill out applications this summer/fall. Needless to say I am going to be very busy this off-season.

[ttldomination]

Let's see...

Let plan to:
CAD
Build a robot
Demos at local science summer camps
Present to some local interested companies
Prepare for off-season event. (This is huge for us cause we get to attract new members with competition early).

- Sunny

[kenavt]

From what I hear so far (I haven't been able to attend a team meeting lately):

• TARDEC competition
• MARC competition
• IRI competition
• Kettering Kickoff competition
• Dawgbot (a small bot using the NI control system that is mostly a programming project to design autonomous stuff (tracking down soccer balls and bringing them back mostly)
• New battery cart
• Perhaps the Stairmaster (which cannot die, it's been around for two years) that can lift things up the stairs in our one of our sponsor's machine shop to our loft workspace)
• The 503 party June 18th
• Other LAN parties/get-togethers that haven't been arranged yet

[Zach O]

Originally Posted by kenavt

From what I hear so far (I haven't been able to attend a team meeting lately):

• Perhaps the Stairmaster (which cannot die, it's been around for two years) that can lift things up the stairs in our one of our sponsor's machine shop to our loft workspace)

The Stairmaster is actually used to move the robot up and down the stairs without having people carry it. None of the machines downstairs would be able to fit on it (with the previous designs that we have).

[pSYeNCe]

Our team doesn't participate in any specific events during the off-season, but if yours is the same you can still learn things involving robotics. I'm working on the team website over summer, for example, but you could also get the CAD student software or LabVIEW installed on a home computer to mess around with.

[3DElizabeth]

Hi Guys,
I'm a mentor on team 342. Don't forget that we are holding the Summer pyGames www.summerpygames.org this summer. SPAM, MORT, the Red Devils, and the Burning Magnetos are all participating from the FRC as well as a local FTC team. The Goal is to make a educational video game in 6 weeks with your team. This gives the programmers & graphic art students something fun to do!
I just found out we are going to be giving away 7 netbooks for the top prize! Feel free to message me if you have any questions.

[plnyyanks]

catch up on the sleep we missed during the rest of the year and purge the mountain dew from our bloodstreams

[pSYeNCe]

Originally Posted by plnyyanks

catch up on the sleep we missed during the rest of the year and purge the mountain dew from our bloodstreams

Hahaha.... I actually laughed pretty hard at that
...because it's true! I had a headache for a full week due to massive absorption of Mountain Dew at the Cleveland Regional. But it was definitely worth it

[FlyingD662]

Some of the other team leaders and I on 662 have been talking alot about the off-season lately and the main things we've come up with are:
1. LOTS of demos at our local middle schools and even elementary schools
2. Hosting an "Engineering Fun Day" for middle and elementary schoolers
and 3. Getting involved in charity... even if it has nothing to do with robotics or engineering (I'm tossing around the idea of a Knit-a-thon haha)