pic: Upcoming CAD Teaser

[roboticWanderor]

loading photo ...

[Jeff K.]

Looks familiar

Good 'ole west coast style arm.
Looks good! You can make the top less wide and it'll work fine.

[cooker52]

It looks like it's all welded together (T/F)

I like it. When can we see the rest (or another part of it)? I can't wait to see how it pulls together.

[thefro526]

Omg!!??!!! a West Coast Armavator? That'd be cool since you've been talking about 254's and 968's elevators.

[Travis Covington]

Looks familiar



While I think this is an excellent way to improve your CAD skills and learn more about the various designs out there, the persistent threads are almost overkill? I have seen more than a few threads/topics that have been rehashed from the beginning because of a few recent CAD models. Most of the stuff was covered in the original threads way back when.

I don't mean to criticize the work; I think you're learning a lot and should be proud of your efforts, I just don't see the need to post your 'interpretation' of team’s designs so frequently. It can also be somewhat confusing to those who aren't familiar with the history. It'd almost make more sense to reply to the old threads? If everyone else disagrees, don't mind me then. Proceed as normal.

[David Guzman]

I have to agree with Travis.

I am a big admirer of the designs by 254 and 968. I also CAD things for my team inspired by them. However I just think that by posting your drawings and tagging them to frc968 and frc254 it creates confusion and it takes away from the original designers.

I did like it when you posted your first gearboxes.

[thefro526]

It really doesn't bother me one way or another if you post up each individual cad design but you might wanna think about starting a thread with all of your designs and cad related discussions. Shoot, with all of the individual threads that have been made in relation to your gearboxes you could have a few hundred posts in one thread.

[Andy Baker]

This time of year, the discussion on CD dies down a bit. It's a great time for people to post CAD pics and designs. Please keep doing this.

Lewis is CADDing some pretty cool stuff here, and I hope he continues.

Travis also has a good point.

My advice to Lewis and others who post their designs is this:

Be clear about what you are posting. Give reference to what inspired you or gave you the idea to make this design. In some cases, it will be a unique design that is an improved method of doing what somebody already did, or it may be a CADded copy of someone else's design. Both are perfectly fine to post (especially at this time of the year). Confusion won't happen if you just give credit or reference to what helped you get to the point of where you are.

Issac Newton was a genius, discovered and proved many things, and still gave credit to those who inspired him. He famously wrote to a rival, Robert Hooke:

"What Descartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, and especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."

The Giants he is referring to are Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Hooke, and many others. Each developed new ideas that would not be done without the previous study of a Giant. While Newton did great things, he still gave credit to those who gave him ideas so he could come up with improvements.

We can all follow Newton's example of giving credit where it is due.

Kudos to Lewis for having not only the skill to make these CAD designs, but also the guts to post them publicly. Thanks to Travis for bringing up a good point.

Andy B.

[JVN]

I agree with Andy's points. It is great to such enthusiasm for mechanical design. Practice makes perfect, and each design you do will help you improve as a designer.

Design is after-all, an iterative process...

My only criticism of your posting is that I am not a huge fan of teasers; there is no need to build hype for an off-season project. (There are also some teasers during the 6-weeks which I feel are inappropriate, but that is another discussion.)

Please post your entire mechanism so we can admire your work, but I would hope you can stay away from posting single ambiguous chunks of your design.

I'm not saying you need to stop posting teasers, I'm just saying they won't pique my interest like a full mechanism design would. I imagine others feel the same way.

Keep up the good work.

Regards,
John

[roboticWanderor]

I appreciate so much attention to my work, it certainly has gotten a lot of feedback.
I think it would be rather cool to start my own thread "gallery" of my CAD work, to keep it organized and lessen the spam on CD media. If anybody knows an appropriate place to do this, please give me a heads up
I take ideas very seriously, and I can definitely see where Travis is coming from. I would be rather disappointed to see some of my ideas given praise if credited to another person. I have taken steps to ensure credit is given, but to be sure, I will go back and edit, restate, and emphasize the original designers of the components I have CADed.
Andy is right, I would not know what I know now if it were not for the inspirational and innovative designs of the great teams out there. I cannot thank them enough for serving as such a great model of engineering and design. Imitation is supposedly the best form of flattery after all.

Now, if you excuse me, I have some work to do...

[Tim Baird]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

"What Descartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, and especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."

I heard that Newton hit 12 green dots after writing that...

[roboticWanderor]

[R.C.]

I love the renders, i can draw really well in solidworks. But how do you get that high quality of a render

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by rc_cola1323

I love the renders, i can draw really well in solidworks. But how do you get that high quality of a render

Make sure you have "Photoworks" enabled as an add-in. Then the Photoworks menu will appear up top, set your material properties/colors and click the render image link, and shazam, sweet looking render.