4th Annual F4 CADathon

Hello everyone,

F4 is pleased to announce that we will be hosting our fourth CADathon from ** the midnight of December 25/26 – the midnight of December 28th/29th**. The live show will be featuring a brand-new panel of judges and will be streamed on December 30th at 8pm EST on the First Updates Now (FUN) twitch channel!

Watch Live on the 30th : https://www.twitch.tv/firstupdatesnow There will be a giveaway during the show for those who watch live!

For the first time ever, F4 is proud to announce that our 4th Bi-Annual CADathon will have a presenting sponsor, Ozzy Boards! Ozzy Boards will be providing vouchers for the winners during the live stream. Check out their amazing products here: ozzyboards.comhttps://i.imgur.com/A4PGce9b.png

For those unaware, a CADathon is like a hackathon but with CAD. People/teams are given a short period of time to CAD a specific thing (in this case a robot) ending with a panel of judges selecting a winner. If you would like more information on the CADathon check out our first, second, and third CADathons.

As for what will go on in ours:

Participants will be split into teams of 2. Teams can be premade with people who know each other or participants can enter by themselves and be assigned a random partner. Partners will be assigned by skill level along with the prerequisite of sharing a common CAD suite. We will try to make sure partners are in the same time zone but that will be more difficult.
From there, every CADathon participant will be invited to the F4 CADathon slack, where they will be able to talk to each other, and be able to ask the GDC questions directly. The teams have approximately 3 days to CAD a robot from the game reveal. The game reveal will include a CAD model of the field, and a game manual. When they are done, teams must create a high quality render of their robot and send the F4 crew a link to their robot uploaded in its entirety on Grabcad.
Teams will also submit a google forms “pit scouting document” which will help explain their design to the judges. If teams do not submit both a render and a Grabcad link by the midnight of December 28th/29th, they will be disqualified. Once done, the files will be inspected to make sure they adhere to the game rules. At 8 PM EST on December 30th, a special F4 CADathon show will go live, hosted on the FUN twitch channel. A panel of 3 special guest judges will judge each robot on set categories explained in the game manual. The judges will also present their scores for each design, their reasoning behind their scores, and finally announce the winners.

The only prerequisites to join are that you are willing to spend time doing it and that you have access to some CAD software. You can be any age (this is not limited to students) and we encourage everyone from newbies to the most advanced CADers to put their skills to the test. If you are new to CAD and would like to be on a larger team to help yourself learn, please contact us as these will be handled on a case to case basis. If you are interested please sign up at the link below. Sign Ups close on December 23rd at Midnight but please sign up as soon as you decide to participate.

Sign up form:

If you are interesting in being a Judge on the show, apply at this google link:

If you have any further questions currently, either post them in this thread, or PM Rohit Gondi (dirtbikerxz) or Samuel Perkowsky (sperkowsky) directly.

Good Luck!

  • The F4 CADathon GDC

So excited to compete in this! The last one was a blast, #GoTeam62! Again, I am looking for a partner for this CADathon who will be dedicated to working long hours for the entire 3 days. PM me if you would like to partner up.

This should be fun!

It’s a great way to practice your CAD skills before the build season, the last one was great, this one should be too.

The last CADathon was great! I’m looking for a partner or partners. I won’t be able to work on it the whole time (I should be able to on the 26th and the 27th), so ideally, I’m looking for someone with experience with CAD and will be able to spend time on it. I use Solidworks primarily. If you are still looking for a partner let me know.

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Alright, I’ll bite.

Can’t wait. This will be my first time competing. hopefully I will be assigned a partner that uses Fusion360!

This will be my first time competing and I have a partner joining me as the Cyborg CADs (sorry). I like the prize(s). Do we know what exactly they will be? What is the official ruling on using old designs?

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The prize values are not defined yet however it has been decided there will be vouchers avaible to the 1st through 3rd place teams. Actual values will be released before the CADathon goes live. I can guarantee you won’t be disappointed though.

As for old designs our rule has always been as long as the files are public and accessible to everyone you can use them.

Glad to see new people involved and I encourage you to ask any other questions you have.

33 people are signed up for CADathon right now! 10 days left to the deadline for signing up (December 23rd at Midnight), spread the word!

Are teams larger than 2 aloud? 3925 think this would be an awesome opportunity to practice our workflow of build season (we have a cad team of about 3-4). Obviously we will split up or just do it on our own time if it hinders the competitive aspect of the event. Just wanted some clarification.

We do allow teams of 3 in certain cases, mainly when the group of three has 1 or more people that have very little time and won’t be able to contribute much, or don’t have much cad experience. If there are only 3 of you, then it should be okay to form 1 team. But, if there are 4 of you I would probably suggest running two separate teams.

40 Participants signed up so far. 1 Week untill the deadline (midnight on december 23rd) for signing up, spread the word!

This is so cool! Us here at 3863 will definitely use this as a CAD training exercise for all (~8 or so) dedicated members of our team.

Can’t wait to compete!

I’m looking for a partner to join a team with that is experienced and willing to kinda help me through the process. No one else on my team is willing to put in the time. I’ve built frames and parts before but never a full robot. I would have a fair bit of time to put into it. (I would be using Solidworks) PM me please if you are interested, thanks.

Having gone through the same process of finding a partner last year, it likely will help if you specify a cad program. It’s very hard to run a cad challenge on multiple different cad platforms…

Great, thanks for the advice. I would be working with Solidworks 2016.

Looking forward to this! Good preseason warm up.

As of today we have hit 50 teams! This is an incredible number (About 20 teams larger than the last event and sign ups have not even closed yet).

We are working hard on the game as well as some of the behind the scenes stuff making sure this event will continue to run fairly seamlessly and be a great experience for teams involved.

I also am happy to announce the prizes. A big thanks to Ozzyboards once again for sponsoring this event.

1st place will receive a $30 voucher
2nd and 3rd will receive a $20 voucher
and there will also be a $30 voucher given away during the show!

*all values are in USD
*Vouchers will be split by number of participants in whatever makes sense to the winning team

We are looking forward to the event and encourage teams to keep signing up!

Oh man this is gonna be painful but you know what, why not…

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87 People signed up!! Can we hit 100??? Spread the word!