Does CAD get respect on your team?

[Arkorobotics]

CAD is our god.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Henry Anthony

I would love to try a Kline's bottle! But what is a Kline's bottle?

It's a bottle with only one side. Don't laugh, it's true. It looks like a normal bottle, except the neck curves around into the interior and meets the bottom. Then it curves to the edges of the bottle and leaves the bottom with a bell-shaped interior. I don't have a picture, but good luck making one!

[FourPenguins]

Originally Posted by ChrisH

The important thing is to practice, practice, practice. Draw little do-hickies that just look cool.

I second that. The best way to learn Inventor is by doing. I have little use for the prepackaged Inventor tutorials, but I learned a lot from the video tutorials found on AutoDesk Streamline.
username: (public)
no password required

(More info on this is the Inventor Award section of this year's game manual.)

[Bill_Hancoc]

I think CAD has some respect on our team but since we are a team with limited machininf capabilties we dont do cad first since we just use inly a few power tools. I thnk our cad team gets respect since they have the full robot in cad and in my opinion i looks great (it also takes 15+ mins to save)

[JasJ002]

Originally Posted by EricRobodox

Last year and this year, the two years i have been on the team, we have set building the robot as priority over cad and animation.

Our teams set the robot as priority because it is priority. Your supposed to run your team as a business. Sponsors are other companies that invest in your product. Shipdate is your teams deadline to finish the robot. This is why we put so many awards and prizes behind the robots. How many regional awards go to teams with good robots, and how many regional awards to teams with good Inventor and Animation work? FIRST started as a robotics competition and that's where it's roots lie. Hopefully, as time passes, Inventor will become a stronger part of FIRST, maybe be a regional award in coming years. With how FIRST, and engineering technology develops we could easy see teams have design teams match, in size, manufacturing teams. But that is all the future, for now we have to work to spread our message to try and make our departments heard. Your teams, along with FIRST, will gain more respect for CAD when we put effort into showing everybody our products. Display Inventor parts in team newspapers, tours, ect. That is how Inventor and CAD will become respected not only in our teams but FIRST as well.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by JasJ002

How many regional awards go to teams with good robots, and how many regional awards to teams with good Inventor and Animation work? ...Hopefully, as time passes, Inventor will become a stronger part of FIRST, maybe be a regional award in coming years.

Where have you been? There are two awards for animation and Inventor right now, and the animation award has three categories. Inventor only has one category. And that's just without using it for the robot; if you win one of the technical awards, you may need it badly, according to Section 10 of the game manual.

[JasJ002]

Originally Posted by EricH

Where have you been? There are two awards for animation and Inventor right now, and the animation award has three categories. Inventor only has one category. And that's just without using it for the robot; if you win one of the technical awards, you may need it badly, according to Section 10 of the game manual.

Look at my quote more closely I said a regional competition. Theres only one animation award at regionals. Theres no inventor award at regionals. Robot awards include driving tomorow's technology, industrial design, Highest rookie seed, 1/2 imagery,quality, innovation in control, regional finalist, regional champion, and creativity. Given yes you might want inventor in order to publish but I dont' think that's everybodies top priority. Most teams want to win awards, and the best way to do that is to create an innovative robot. Like I said earlier if we make our presence known more awards will come. Oh and by the way EricH last year I lead the team that won the Inventor award at championships last year I do know a little something about the award.

[negfrequency]

Originally Posted by JasJ002

Oh and by the way EricH last year I lead the team that won the Inventor award at championships last year I do know a little something about the award.

I have to give you points man. The autodesk inventor visualization award is my favorite, and i missed out on it last year. I will probably devote 90% of my life to that award next year. the other 10% will be probably eating. Sleeping is out of the question.

[Eric Scheuing]

Let's just say the mentors <3 us.

[techtiger1]

1251 uses Inventor and teaches it to our younger students, because through the two years we have really used CAD as a team it has proved to be a wonderful thing for us. We also use CAM and think that computer aided anything is good. We wanted to submit an inventor award this year but due to some poor Inventor material specifications and not paying attention we ended up overweight which prompted a lot of lat minute design changes which killed the Inventor award submission idea, were definitely going to use CAD next year and plan on submitting for the Inventor award.

-Drew

[=Martin=Taylor=]

On our team CAD gets a lot of respect, but barely anyone knows how to use it.

This was the first year in quite some time that our team designed the entire robot in CAD. The funny thing was... well... we.... errr... designed the robot after we built it... yeah...

The reason? We wanted to try out for the Autodesk Inventor award and also hoped to put the drawings in our publication (if we won it).

This may sound silly but you wouldn't believe how much I learned from this project. If you really want to learn Inventor sit down and try to CAD something that is already built (also keep a pillow handy to punch when you get frustrated ).

Check out the bot!
http://www.team100.org/about/autodesk/robot/robot.php

[Paul Copioli]

Let's put it this way: CAD should be an important par tof your team.

Otherwise, you are missing out on a significant part of the modern engineering cyle. Can a FIRST robot be designed without it? Absolutely. Should it be designed without it? Not if one of your goals is to expose your students to the entire realm of engineering.

Team 217 places a priority on CAD. Specifically, we teach our students how to use Solidworks and then we design 95% of the robot in SW prior to building anything. In most cases we give some of our sponsors the solid model and they build the part from the student designed model with no drawing. All of our sheet metal is designed this way.

So, yes, our CAD gets respect.

[Wayne C.]

nothing gets built without CADs

WC

[PIRATECAPTIN]

No they do not. Our robot is already gone and were still trying to finish the CAD! They didn't respect in FLL and they are not respecting it now.

[negfrequency]

Originally Posted by Henry Anthony

I am wondering if your team considers CAD as an important part of the competition or is there little interest in it?

Initially, i must admit that i looked at CAD as a pretty pathetic part of the team. I thought it wasnt really contolling anything, but we did have one kid who had some REALLY different ideas, and made some good visualizations to explain them. Despite the fact that we never used them, they were seriously taken into consideration above other peoples designs because he had displayed how it could work, not just explained, capturing the larger audience.

I still have people on my team who think that i do nothing, but after working with the one kid for the animation award and winning the award in the fingerlakes regional, we got a lot more respect. I think that our team realizes now the importance of a CAD system working in a company environment, and the potential it has. I think that anyone going into the engineering field will realize the importance of CAD in their college years because it certainly has an impact.