Discussion: Release Team Field Drawings Early

[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.

[bkahl]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

This brings up the unspoken advantage that kickoff host teams have over the rest of us. They show of the field elements at kick off, then get to keep them for the season.

Sigh...TO GET BACK ON TRACK....

To build the field for a kickoff, I'm fairly certain you have to sign some kind of NDA to see the field drawings. This prevents any teams who have access to the drawings from spreading them to others and to their own team members who have not yet seen the field.

I don't see an issue with opening this access to anyone who wants to sign the NDA, regardless on whether or not the build is for a Kickoff event. I think opening this to mentors only is a reasonable measure to ensure that the students are still getting the "kickoff experience".

125 builds the field elements for the local kick-off event (I am not involved- I'm home in CT on break during the build), and it was really nice to have everything ready to go on Day 1. From what I understand, it took the contingency of mentors a dew days work to get the elements done. I can definitely see where an advantage comes into play, and how the field build can be especially challenging when most of the team would rather get "robot-work" done.

However, before we release the field drawings early, maybe there should be a little more work ensuring proper dimension rules are followed.

[BrendanB]

I would have to give more thought to this jumping on either side

A good portion of kickoff teams have an advantage over their peers because they have these elements at their disposal. There are a few teams who build the fields but can't store them so they give some or all to other teams so the "all kickoff teams have an advantage" isn't necessarily true. Our team spent most of week 1 making the field with some items extending beyond into weeks 2 or 3 IIRC.

On the flip side we didn't make wooden versions of the static defenses. The team has a contact who got all the metal parts together and our mentors & students welded them in our shop. We only made one of the three sides to a tower and like many teams we didn't bother with the Sallyport or Drawbridge. We never completed our CDF. A hybrid wooden frame, metal door Portcullis was made and only used once for a test IIRC.

So if we had the drawings early I'm not sure what that would do for us since we upgraded to metal versions or skipped making others complete or altogether. Looking back we would have wasted a good portion of our time compared to what we ended up with. Maybe we wouldn't have made metal versions of the field?

All of that being said, the next town to our north is Manchester so the local kickoff for us involves seeing the full competition field. It wouldn't be fair for us to cry, "Disadvantage" over our peers in other areas because we don't have the team elements built and some do.

Opening up the drawings earlier should be discussed. If you choose not to build a full or partial field based on the released materials that is your decision. This is the same type of decision teams make when it comes to how many hours they meet, if they want to use their withholding allowance, or even use some or any of their unbag time. Yes there are teams who don't use withholding or decide not to use their unbag time

I agree with every comment on how bad the field drawings are. It is horrendous.

[Cothron Theiss]

I think releasing the field drawings early is a bit of an unnecessary action, but there are steps FIRST should take to lessen the burden on teams in years where the field is especially complex. As many people have mentioned, the field drawings have to be correct, easy to interpret, and easy to make wood* versions of. Oftentimes, the people reading these drawings have no experience in drafting or CAD or have even seen engineering drawings. I know FIRST HQ is an extremely busy place, but it might help if they created a series of videos of building wood versions of field elements with hand tools and the resources available to most teams. If they release this with the slew of materials also available to teams on Kickoff, teams might be able to create field elements much more similar to what they'll actually see at a competition.

Some have mentioned releasing a bill of materials for the field elements early. I think this could also be helpful, as teams can go ahead and buy materials over Christmas break and be ready to go for game reveal.


*I realize some teams build field elements out of other materials, but I'd say the vast majority of teams that need help building the field elements are building them out of wood.

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by bkahl

To build the field for a kickoff, I'm fairly certain you have to sign some kind of NDA to see the field drawings. This prevents any teams who have access to the drawings from spreading them to others and to their own team members who have not yet seen the field.

Correct.

I don't see an issue with opening this access to anyone who wants to sign the NDA, regardless on whether or not the build is for a Kickoff event. I think opening this to mentors only is a reasonable measure to ensure that the students are still getting the "kickoff experience".

This would be a significant load on FIRST to accomplish; field builder is an assigned volunteer role for official events, where they have some degree of control. And I should note that FIRST strongly discourages active team mentors from being assigned to this role.

125 builds the field elements for the local kick-off event (I am not involved- I'm home in CT on break during the build), and it was really nice to have everything ready to go on Day 1. From what I understand, it took the contingency of mentors a dew days work to get the elements done. I can definitely see where an advantage comes into play, and how the field build can be especially challenging when most of the team would rather get "robot-work" done.

Also accurate. 2015's field was pretty trivial, and it kicked our butts.

However, before we release the field drawings early, maybe there should be a little more work ensuring proper dimension rules are followed.

Major key.

Source: Kickoff coordinator for South Carolina 2015-2016; Garnet Squadron bankrolled (but did not build) field elements in 2015.

[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.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Part of the "kickoff experience" used to be getting the name of the game, that's no longer true so clearly we can make big changes. I don't think it's hurt the kickoff experience, there have been several leaks in the past and i don't remember ever feeling cheated by knowing something a little early, we still didn't have the complete rule set so we couldn't start designing.

I'm all for giving more information to teams to make the FRC season less stressful and improve the quality of robots on the field.

[dtengineering]

I'm certainly not opposed to the idea of releasing the game element designs early, but the practical limitation of backing up against Christmas holidays is an issue.

As mentioned earlier, a bit more refinement of the "wooden field" drawings would be helpful. The drawings may have improved, but I remember thinking "this was drawn by someone who has never built anything." (To quote one of my colleagues... "These were drawn by a @#$%@#$ engineer.") A bit of an exaggeration, but the drawings certainly didn't express any empathy for the builder.

Having a team of people who have never seen the final elements build and assemble the "wooden field" based on the drawings would not only provide feedback on how to improve the drawings but would also provide a chance to have a photographic step-by-step guide on how to build the field.

It would also help to have a parts list so that teams could have plywood, 2x4's and any weird hardware bits in stock, rather than having to spend the weekend chasing them down.

Good suggestion, though... having some practice field elements makes a BIG difference in building a reasonably competitive robot.

Jason

[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.

[MARS_James]

Like some of the other teams in the thread I am from a team who builds a field for a kick-off and honestly we do not get that much of an advantage over most other FRC teams. For one thing they tell us to build things but usually don't tell us how they go together until as late as possible prior to the kick off (We actually got it the night before last year). For the sake of honesty I will tell you that as of this moment we know nothing about this years game beyond what was shown in the teaser so it isn't like we start getting stuff way ahead of time.

Honestly speaking from experience being a kickoff team isn't a huge advantage because the way the game is played (atleast the last 3 years) is a mystery.
2014: Had no idea there was no end game, did not know about assists, or catching, or how many game pieces were on the field.
2015: Literally the field told you nothing, and when we got the game pieces (A garbage can and a pool noodle, since we did not know that the totes were pieces) we were more confused.
2016: We knew there would be multiple obstacles, but did not know that we HAD to cross them, or that crossing gave you points, or that crossing multiple effected your ranking. We also could only guess at the game piece based on the tower but we did not know we would be limited to only 1.

Also as an aside to anyone from FIRST who may or may not be reading this, last year we built a team version of the hanging bar for 0 reasons since we just put them on the tower anyway. When you release something like that please let kickoff teams know what is a field element and what is just a separate free standing item for testing purposes so we don't waste resources building something unnecessary.


But for the topic at hand I am all for releasing the drawings of field elements ahead of time for everyone but not releasing the full field to everyone till kickoff.

[Tom Ore]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

I agree with every comment on how bad the field drawings are. It is horrendous.

At the Iowa Regional, a person from FIRST was there - during setup, I asked him who made the field drawings. He said, "I did." After a short pause to think it over, I said "You know, they were really awful." He did not disagree.

Apparently they work very long days doing both the official field drawings and the team drawings in a very short window. It's easy for me to say that it doesn't take much more time to put proper dimensions on a drawing than it does to put less useful dimensions. This is difficult to do when you're worn out from working so many hours.

I'm hoping this year's schedule leaves a little more time for working the details of the field.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Tom Ore

At the Iowa Regional, a person from FIRST was there - during setup, I asked him who made the field drawings. He said, "I did." After a short pause to think it over, I said "You know, they were really awful." He did not disagree.

You're my hero.

[Brandon Holley]

As someone who has been leading field builds and hosting kickoffs since 2008, I just wanted to add a couple bits of color to the discussion.

While I think the advantages to host teams/mentors are obvious, it is definitely more of a mixed bag than a slam dunk advantage. Deciphering the drawings is a TON of work that then needs to be built into a BOM and budget. For me, I also do the materials run each year, which means I get to go buy the sometimes insane amount of wood required.

Often times, what we build is completely useless, or misleading. I cannot tell you how much effort went into building the 2013 practice version Pyramid that was completely useless for anything but aesthetic or scale. It did help the 45 teams at the Kickoff we hosted get a sense for scale, but it was unuseable for climbing. The 2010 tower had 4X4 sides, not round bar needed for most curl up hangers. The 2014 practice Truss was SO not worth the effort for something that was essentially a volleyball net.

All of those projects required dozens or even hundreds of man hours to pull off. It was also pulled off at a time where a lot of us want to spend time with family and enjoy the calm before the storm. On top of that, in many instances, the version we built needed heavy modifcation or complete rebuild to fulfill the teams needs. This meant duplicating the work we already did.

It's a lot of wasted time, money, effort, etc. There is definitely advantages that come from it for the team having some elements done, but wanted to frame the effort and risk behind it.

-Brando

[EricH]

Here's a crazy idea.

Why not, prior to Kickoff, release a "Cut List"? Doesn't have to be final size, but I could see something like this:

Element 1 (<=1):

• 5" x 5" wood beam, 3' long, QTY 1
• 3/4" plywood, 3' long by 1.5' wide, QTY 1

Element 2 (<=1):

• 3/4" plywood, 3' long by 1.5' wide, QTY 1
• 3' long 1.5" x 1.5" wood beam, QTY 2

Element 3 (<=5):
(list of parts for defense base)

[remaining elements of field]

You get the idea. Doesn't have to be final size, or have any funny angles included, but should be, if cut, a "kit" that will allow teams to take an educated guess as to what they'll want to build, and the approximate size. For example, if I saw something saying "<=5", I'd take a guess and say "I think I need to build a couple of these, let me look at the list for that". And for stuff with a "common" piece, I'd probably cut a bunch of those pieces.

Then, when Kickoff comes out, all FIRST has to do is include one extra list with the Manual:
Element 1 = Rock Wall, pg X
Element 2 = Rough Terrain, pg Y
Element 3 = Defense Base, pg Z
[...]
Then everybody can get their pre-cut "kits" and assemble.

Still doesn't solve the nuisance of "hey, who gave us bad team-build materials" but should get teams to that point faster.

[Knufire]

I really like this. Mentoring a team that struggled to build fields in 2015 and 2016, the chokehold was...
a. figuring out how much wood we needed and of what type
b. getting all the parts cut. Since we didn't have the required woodworking equipment, we had to rely on parents willing to donate time and therefore work around their schedules.
Once we got all the parts made, assembly went off quickly and relatively painlessly.

Getting simply the part drawings ahead of time would be a huge help. Even if they did give us exact quantities, I don't think there's much you can learn ahead of kickoff trying to piece the subassemblies together without any idea of what the full assembly is supposed to be.