Discussion: Release Team Field Drawings Early

[Justin Montois]

I have been thinking more about ways to increase the low to mid level teams competitiveness in the FRC. Eliminating Bag Day, District Events ETC, I believe have this goal in mind as well.

Another thing we may want to consider is releasing Some/All of the team specific drawings a week before kickoff. I believe this would, among other things;

1: Give teams more time during build season to focus on building robots. The 2016 game alone required weeks for some teams to build field elements.

2. Improve the quality of the Prototyping and eventually robots as early designs will have a better chance of success with quality field elements that weren't built during the initial build season rush.

3. Eliminate the built in advantage of some teams, mine included, that are involved in hosting kickoffs and have access to pre-built field elements immediately after kickoff.

4. The FRC community can collaborate on best practices to build elements. Issues like the 2013 team drawing Pyramid could be avoided with crowd sourced solutions before the six week build season is impacted.

I think the argument that the secrecy of the game must be maintained is a bit of an antiquated notion. I believe that most teams will wait until the actual game rules are released before spending time and money guessing at the game. And honestly, so what if they do. I think any potential benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

I am very interested in the opinion of others. Thoughts?

[EricH]

I would be rather hesitant to release team field drawings early. However, I do believe that there are a number of steps FIRST HQ can take without doing that in order to make teams' life easier.

In no particular order:

• Realize that teams have to interpret the drawings--and then design for manufacturability. For example, any angle that needs better than whole-number precision should probably be spec'd as two different linear dimensions that will allow the angle to be right, or very close to right. (2015). It's a lot easier to build stuff if you can actually read the drawings and they're easy to build. This right here is huge.
• Not have quite so many field elements. "Duh." Honestly, there were only about 20 separate chunks of a team field in 2016... and roughly three in 2014. 2015 was partway in between, but see above.
• Have a "quick-and-dirty" version for many elements. See also, the mimic targets that a lot of teams brought to check shooters. (Or, for 2014: Gimme a string/sports net and two posts that are tall enough. Actually, gimme 2, one for the high goals and one for the truss.) If teams want to build their own "real" field, have the drawings available. That way, teams can build the quick-and-dirty, and later they can build the not-so-quick at their own pace if they think they'll actually need it.
• Build A SET at HQ, for HQ testing. And then, of course, pass on any knowledge gained by such items to teams. Woulda been really nice to practice the drawbridge on lexan, for example. But most teams built wood. Lexan behaves much differently. Ditto for Portcullis.
• Don't change drawings mid-season because your vendor couldn't do what you wanted them to...
• Put ALL the parts needed for an assembly with the assembly in the drawing. It does help if you don't have to go chasing down to 20 pages later.

There are a number of improvements to the process, yes. I don't see an early release being one of them, TBH. Though having the material list coming out early, or a partial material list, would be helpful in checking for supplies on-hand.

[cadandcookies]

I think this is a great idea. I've been involved with building the field for the UMN Kickoff for the last couple years, and honestly, even as field builders we often have no real idea of what the game is. Most of our hints come from the names of the drawings, and that's not enough to really let us figure it out. If they were completely anonymous numbers for all the parts, it would be even harder to guess.

I feel like FIRST has been getting themselves all worked up over the secrecy of the field, and the more they clamp down, the less benefits they're going to see from the field builder program. Perhaps opening the door a bit is what FRC really needs, instead of desperately trying to shut everyone out.

[GeeTwo]

Uh, please, no.

First of all, we try to consider our game strategy before we build field elements. This year, we did not build a Sally Port or Draw Bridge, because we didn't plan to cross those defenses, and there are probably plenty of low-goal teams that never bothered to build a tower above about four feet, saving a lot of heartache. In 2013 we only put a full set of rungs on one face of our pyramid, and we didn't care about the corners, because that's all we needed. If we'd waited a bit longer before starting, we probably would have built something that didn't look like a pyramid at all, just three bars between two wooden ladder frames. (This is what started us prioritizing goals for field elements, BTW.)

Besides, looking at field elements, it's usually straightforward to figure out what you do with them. The low bar, rough terrain, and ramparts are all clearly obstacles to be driven over/under. The pyriamid goal was recognizable to players of Frisbee golf. The size and shape of the Aerial Assist Goals certainly suggested the size and shape of the game piece. Of course, seeing the field, most of us would have ALSO expected a hanging endgame to Aerial Assist.

Once you figure that out, you will have teams begin prototyping likely functions, increasing the disparity between high-resource and low-resource teams. Once the field drawings for Stronghold were released under this proposal, 233 and 254 and 1114 will be building drive trains, mid-level teams will order pneumatic wheels and/or tank tread and do some CAD work, low resource teams will build field elements they might never use, and rookie and really-low resource teams would fall farther behind.

[gblake]

Justin,

For this non-Chairmans part of competing, can you be more specific about the segment of the on-the-field teams are you thinking about?

What metric do you have in mind when you write "low to mid-level".

"Competitiveness" means several different things to different people, and "Teams" covers a broad spectrum. Help the conversation avoid diving down the wrong rabbit holes by adding some detail about who you have in mind.

Blake

[Chris is me]

They can be released on time if they're readable and not impossible to build. I'd rather they spend the time giving the drawings to an experienced builder to actually try and build the wood versions they come up with using only the drawings. That way they'll have a good chance to spot the glaring flaws, missing dimensions, etc.

We only need them early if they continue their "standards" of "quality" that they have been meeting in the years past.

[bkahl]

Originally Posted by gblake

Justin,

For this non-Chairmans part of competing, can you be more specific about the segment of the on-the-field teams are you thinking about?

What metric do you have in mind when you write "low to low-level".

"Competitiveness" means several different things to different people, and "Teams" covers a broad spectrum. Help the conversation avoid diving down the wrong rabbit holes by adding some detail about who you have in mind.

Blake

Confused about what you don't understand here...

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

I have been thinking more about ways to increase the low to mid level teams competitiveness in the FRC. Eliminating Bag Day, District Events ETC, I believe have this goal in mind as well.

-----
What does the "non-chairman's" phrase mean? Why do you jump to critique potential ideas with tangible goals to help teams and our program? And why do I get the feeling you don't care anything about actually building robots...?

[sanddrag]

I would like for the drawings to include a simple and easy-to-read bill of materials for lumber and whatnot, so I can just go to the lumber yard and buy it, without having to add it all up from eleventeen different drawing sheets.

[topgun]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

I would like for the drawings to include a simple and easy-to-read bill of materials for lumber and whatnot, so I can just go to the lumber yard and buy it, without having to add it all up from eleventeen different drawing sheets.

Amen, Ditto, Double Ditto...

This would be a significant help. They could total by field piece, for those teams that won't build every field piece because of their strategy, plus total for all field pieces for those that will build all pieces.

Also, building field pieces is a wonderful way to get parents involved, rather than taking the students away from the strategy and prototyping.

[Drakxii]

I agree with others that we don't need them early, we need them better. Some of the measurements on the 2015 and 2016 drawings were just baffling. If FIRST wants to help with this they need to give directions instead of just drawings. Give out documents that have bill of materials, suggested tools and work instructions, along with the drawings.

Another thing they could do is give Andymark(and/or other companies) the drawings as early as possible, with an NDA, and then let Andymark figure out if they can make and sell a flat pack version of the kit they can sell before kickoff so it shows around kickoff for the teams.

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

I would like for the drawings to include a simple and easy-to-read bill of materials for lumber and whatnot, so I can just go to the lumber yard and buy it, without having to add it all up from eleventeen different drawing sheets.

Absolutely this!
We dont need this to become another engineering/math exercise since often times, there are discrepancies between different views of the drawings which makes this an even harder task than it should be.

Another recommendation, I hope they keep the field elements as simple as possible. 2016 was a nightmare to build and a lot of $$$$$ to spend.

[rsisk]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

I would like for the drawings to include a simple and easy-to-read bill of materials for lumber and whatnot, so I can just go to the lumber yard and buy it, without having to add it all up from eleventeen different drawing sheets.

This could be done today by any of the teams that build for a kickoff creating a BOM and cut list and posting it here at kickoff.

I'll try to be organized this year and do that.

[Ari423]

Originally Posted by rsisk

This could be done today by any of the teams that build for a kickoff creating a BOM and cut list and posting it here at kickoff.

I'll try to be organized this year and do that.

Someone said above somewhere that everyone who works on building the field before the season needs to sign a NDA that they won't tell what the field elements are before kickoff. Wouldn't publicizing the cut list without consent from FIRST be a breach of the NDA?

[rsisk]

Originally Posted by Ari423

Someone said above somewhere that everyone who works on building the field before the season needs to sign a NDA that they won't tell what the field elements are before kickoff. Wouldn't publicizing the cut list without consent from FIRST be a breach of the NDA?

Yeah, I suggested releasing at kickoff when the field drawings are public. Pretty sure I read in my NDA it only applies until the information is public.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Ari423

Someone said above somewhere that everyone who works on building the field before the season needs to sign a NDA that they won't tell what the field elements are before kickoff. Wouldn't publicizing the cut list without consent from FIRST be a breach of the NDA?

I've assumed that the folks volunteering to publish the info would do it at their local kickoffs (not a week early).

That would be different from the OP's suggestion, but hopefully accomplish a big chunk of the benefit the OP wanted to accomplish.

The publishers will need to pay attention to the recently announced world wide coordination of kickoff announcements, but otherwise it should be easy to do correctly.

Blake