Do any Cad Leads Have any Advice for a Rookie? looking for some help I’m new to Chiefdelphi, but I’m pretty efficient with CAD
Any particular advice youre looking for? With forums like this, youre more likely to get responses if you ask questions people feel they can answer.
It probably just Tips on how to do things faster, I know that doesn’t help much but I don’t need anything in particular.
Well advice will differ whether youre a “rookie to FRC”, or a “rookie lead”.
If new to a team, since you say youre fairly proficient with CAD, put those skills to use. Work closely with your lead (and/or other team leadership) to figure out what parts/assemblies need to be done and get them done quickly. Seek feedback along the way to confirm your understanding was correct, and don’t be afraid to ask questions. As you gain professional respect and trust, you’ll be able to make suggestions on how to do things better. Dont be afraid to make suggestions at any point, but understand they may not be taken as seriously until that trust has been earned.
If you’re a rookie lead, the advice flips a bit. Do less, and trust more. Your role is now more of a teach-er than a do-er. Give direction, but dont take over. Understand that not everyone may have the skillset to do it as fast as you, and thats okay! If you do it all yourself, you become a “team” of 1, and nobody else learns or improves. But most of all, have patience.
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You say you’d like to do things faster; could you give us some examples of which things feel too slow?
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, thank you very much.
I’m pretty Slow when it comes to making Drawings, specifically labeling them.
What are you using these drawings for? To send them off to a manufacturer, or other students on the team? You can generally get away with much less detail if your own teammates are making the part as long as you go talk with them about it in person.
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I am sending them to others on my team.
And I should have asked how you guys manufacture the majority of your parts, as if you are using a router drawings become less important, but if they are being made by hand then I would suggest only including all of the necessary dimensions and exclude things like tolerance, surface finish, and nice borders. You can either just write those things down on the paper or just tell the maker in person.
Ok thank you very much
Keep your CAD folder organized and don’t cut corners. Every corner you cut increases the chance of it coming back to bite you later on.
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like people above me said, make sure you don’t fixate on tasks that take alot of time and keep you from helping your team. Your first priority should be being available.
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not everything requires your attention or contribution.
2.1 You’re leading a team which means it’s very likely to have some cases where 2 people need your help at once. you’re only one person. know your team members enough to know when they truly need your help and when they can figure it out themselves with more thought.
2.2 you don’t need to know about every little thing happening at all times. Sometimes you need to trust your team members to know what they’re doing and not bother them. make sure you know what’s going on, but if you see your team member working on something, let them finish and ask after they’re done. worst case, they make a mistake and they’ll fix it later. -
know your team members. some people require more attention, some don’t. know who is which and act accordingly
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pick your battles. it’s inevitable that you and your team will have some disagreements. however, not every argument is worth the time and effort. only argue about what really matters, even if some things will not be exactly as you want them to be.
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see the big picture. Sometimes individual cadders will be focused on the one or two mechanisms they’re cadding and not notice clashes with other mechanisms. your job is to catch those mistakes and try to avoid them the best you can.
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