pic: Render: 2012 Robot - Captain Pike

[Tom Ore]

Originally Posted by Madison

How many hours were spent modeling this?

I'll answer that a bit indirectly. This was our 3rd concept. We did basic CAD work on 2 other robots before we abandonded them and settled on this concept. It was the middle of the 2nd week before we got on track with this robot. We did the mini-octocanum modules first and got drawings to one of our sponsors. I did most of that CAD work myself since it had to be done very quickly. I had to leave town for a few days - when I got back in town on Jan 22nd, the team had the octocanum modules built. The goal from then on was for the CAD team to stay just far enough ahead of the build team so we could give them the exact size, shape and location of features for the parts that were needed. I worked with our 2 CAD students during meeting times to get them to do as much as possible. I filled in as needed early in the mornings and before meeting times to be sure we kept ahead of the build team. As we got later in the build season, the build team got ahead of us with smaller details like motor mounts, potentiometers, optical sensors, the hall effect sensor, etc. Most of those small details I added to the CAD model in the last week or so.

It helped to have a full model from last year. Many of the components I could just grab and move to this year's model. I also made sure we kept the material properties up to date as we went so the rendering step would be quick.

I did have to give up on some of the small details I wanted to add - like the pneumatic tubing on the far side, and lots of screws and nuts are missing.