Building a model field with limited space?

[GearMan98]

So according to our field parts team, we don't have anywhere in our area of the school large enough to reproduce half of the field. What should we do. What kind of field parts need to be priorities, and can we scale them down? Has anyone else run into similar problems?

[weaversam8]

I would prioritize at least one scoring platform, one scoring station, and the tape squares on the floor for Auto.

[Storcky]

If you're planning on going for coopertition points or grabbing totes/recycling containers from the middle, I'd say also build a portion of a Step, but you don't need the entire length.

[mrmummert]

In our first few years (except 2006) 1610 used the stage in the high school auditorium as a practice field. We couldn't do a whole field but it was close enough to do almost a half field. We even had an entire wooden version of the rack from 2007 on it. When we were done we'd move everything off to the side of the stage.

[marshall]

I think FIRST is missing an opportunity with their "team drawings" in that they assume teams have the space to house some of the larger field elements. We actually published a CAD model of our high goal last year that could fold in half for storage. It made transporting it and storing it a lot easier.

Personally, I feel FIRST should really address this with the version of the field elements that they release to teams.

That being said, there is nothing stopping a team from only building partial field elements. If teams are doing this then I encourage them to release CAD drawings so other teams can benefit.

[K-Dawg157]

My team has a room that is actually smaller than a field would be, and what we do is we make the field elements that are most important to us. So we set our priorities (Last year it was shooting into the high goal) and then we had a separate little team build the high goal. We made it so that it could easily come apart and be put away somewhere.

So what I would do is prioritize what you want your robot to do, and then build what you need so that it can be easily taken apart.