Learning design should be easy.
If you are a beginner, learning robot design and CAD sucks. You went through some beginner CAD courses, and watched a video series or two, and by the end, you still have no clue how to start designing an FRC robot. If you are self-taught, you might spend dozens of hours on something that might take someone else an hour or two, and you have no clue why.
We had four goals.
- Access: Nobody should have to reinvent the wheel. Make high-quality design and CAD learning and knowledge accessible to all. Raise the floor.
- Quality: Have a resource that meets our extremely high expectations. Make it good enough that the top teams in the world trust it.
- Engagement: Make learning robot design engaging and efficient. Make learning as active as possible, and make it significantly easier to learn and improve.
- Centrality: No more digging through dozens of outdated resources. Keep everything in one place and open source so it’s easy to reference and update
So, we made FRCDesign.org.
What is FRCDesign.org?
FRCDesign.org aims to be your go-to source for design and CAD in Onshape. The primary content is the learning course and the design handbook. (Work in Progress!)
Additional resources include:
- A reference guide for recommended CAD organization practices for top-down design in Onshape.
- Handpicked mechanism examples with detailed breakdowns.
- Beginner and intermediate design challenges for extra practice.
We’re also open-source!
Learning Course:
The learning course blends the design and CAD progression to help you go from zero to designing full mechanisms with the best practices possible. It’s project-based, meaning you’ll always practice CAD by designing FRC parts and assemblies. The scaffolded approach allows for a gradual decrease in hand-holding over time, allowing you not to feel constrained by the course while still knowing “what to do” to improve.
To limit the scope, the learning course is only for Onshape, and there are no plans for additional CAD software.
Stage 0:
- Learn basic CAD theory
- Setup onshape
- Install feature scripts and MKCad
Stage 1:
- Learn the fundamentals of sketching, part design, multi-part modeling, and assemblies for FRC
- Learn about power transmission through gearbox modeling exercises. Learn how to design with belts, chains, and gears
- Model a swerve drivebase
- Introduce yourself to a top-down design workflow for FRC, starting from layout sketches and making full-detail parts
Stage 2:
- Learn about common mechanisms in FRC and design them yourself
- Practice your CAD skills with these projects till you get comfortable with Onshape as a tool.
- Learn engineering concepts and the fundamentals behind mechanism design intuitively.
- Learn how to make layout sketches for different mechanisms.
Stage 3 (WIP):
- Learn the concepts for full robot design
- Make Crayola CAD to figure out the interactions between mechanisms.
- Learn the fundamentals and practice full robot master sketches
- Design your first full pick and place and shooter robot.
Stage 4 (Semi-complete, plans for revision later):
- Work on your own projects, get feedback, and focus on specific skills you want to learn.
- Examine and study more robots
- Learn engineering design and more advanced concepts for design.
- Learn Strategic design.
Design Handbook (Coming Soon):
The design handbook aims to be an in-depth reference manual covering fundamentals and advanced FRC robot design techniques. While examples are given in Onshape, the content is largely CAD software agnostic.
This category is a large work in progress and will continue to be added long after the learning course is finished. Feel free to write your content for something we don’t have yet, and we’ll try to incorporate it into the website.
Do note that it is important to get things checked, and we will reject the submission if it is not up to our standards.
Who made FRCDesign.org?
FRCDesign.org is the culmination of hundreds of hours of work between a group of FIRST students, alumni, and mentors from teams all over the world.
Primary Contributors
- David
- Kelly - FRC 1778AM
- Andrew Card - FRC 6657AM
- Jonathan Mi - FRC 3647/9442M
Other Contributors
- Brendan - FRC 1153/1119
- Astro - FRC 6423A
- Neel - FRC 5026A
- Eeshwar - FTC 7244A
- Vaughn - FRC 8033
- Eliot D - FRC 111
- Ben - FRC 8738
- Sidd - FRC 4089 AM
- George T - FRC 840
- Connor - FRC 8177A
Additional Input
- Andrew Torrance - FRC 254M
- JJ - FRC 4414M
- Mike Corsetto - FRC 1678M
- Nick Kremer - FRC 3512AM
- Nick Coussens - FRC 33M
- Nick Aarestad - FRC 2220M
- Andrew Lawrence
- Bryce Hanson- FRC 7525M/125M
- Trisha - FRC 1868
- Chickenbonker - FRC 6423A
- Lati
- Jeremy
- Sarah - FRC 3647
- Evan
- John - FRC 3928M
- Brian Wagg - FRC 739M
- Tung Chan (Joe) - FRC 4546M
- Andy M-P - FRC 3504M
- Chun-che Lo - FRC 4499M
- Travis Norris - FRC 2423M
- Eric Berquist - FRC 3100M
- Kevin - FRC 2399M
- Anand Rajamani - Redux Robotics
- Nolan - FRC 9432 student
- Tim - FRC 8248M
- Oliver - FRC 4089
- Cloudcake8 - FRC 3006
- pointybirb - FRC 3256A
- Lewy - FRC 8033
- George - FRC 2521A
- Ishaan - FRC 8177A
- Honore - FRC 1072
- Wither - FRC 6443A
- Zachary - FRC 4990A
- Jupiter - FRC 9483
- Anshul - FRC 4414AM
- Rohit - FRC 8044M
How to Contribute:
Next Steps:
We have spent most of the development time on the course so far (taking hundreds of hours!).
Our next goals are to smooth the progression based on feedback, add example 3D printed mechanisms, finish the design handbook content, and finish Stage 3.
We’re also looking to fill out more of the mechanism example breakdowns.
