With the 2025 season just around the corner I would like to know when teams lock in a design for the game. Even though designs and ideas will change throughout the building process when do you try to have a design done and start building your competition bot.
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We’ve set a hard deadlock for robot architecture(not the whole CAD) to be set about 10 days after kickoff. In 2023 we ended up pushing it to the following morning after a debate that was really important the previous night ended up going way longer than expected and we did settle on our design the next morning.
Having that deadline and being set in stone is really important because in 2022 we ended up switching designs about 4 times over 4 weeks and it caused our robot to be so rushed. Never Again.
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Very heavily depends on your team’s capabilities, and that years game. In 2023 we didn’t lock until the end of week 2 because of how long the debate over complexity and tipped cones went on for, but we had our final architecture on day 3 and officially locked on day 5 this year. If you have the resources to throw a bunch of different ideas at the wall, see what sticks, and then build your robot from scratch in 2 weeks, then you can take some extra time. But if you have limited meeting time or a large delay with orders due to POs, I would try to lock your architecture earlier.
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Absolutely. Our team sometimes struggles a bit, so we don’t really have a set deadline. it’s usually just whenever we find something that works. I agree that POs can complicate things greatly, so it’s always better to lock in a design sooner rather than later, but it really all depends on your team.
(I would think something like 2 weeks in is the absolute latest to have a design. Again, varies team to team.)
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I’ve hopped around teams a bunch and everyone has a slightly different schedule, but here’s a rough outline of what I’ve seen as common. I think this schedule is too slow in modern FRC to be a top level team, but has generally been what we’ve followed.
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Architecture (general # of DOF and mechanism concepts in rough Crayola CAD) NLT week 1 Saturday, but usually earlier. Sometimes we get this as early as Sunday after Kickoff, sometimes there’s still a mechanism to figure out the first weekend based on how prototypes go.
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Rolling chassis built week 2 Saturday (this can and should shift forward drastically with COTS swerve)
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CAD Complete, typically aim for finishing this Week 3 Monday (usually MLK day so we can binge CAD with the day off), but I think I’ve only ever achieved that once. Usually happens by end of week 3.
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Robot fully wired and turned over to code team Saturday week 5.
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Practicing (and usually redesigning something week 6)
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We try and have our design done by week 3-4, but that’s often unfortunately slipped to week 5+. Then we’ll try and have the build done by week 6, and use the rest of the time to test driving and programming. Often that also slips to week 7 as we run into issues, and then we don’t have too much testing time
Well we just finished our last offseason competition with our main comp bot, so I’d say we’re officially locked on our design now.
Ok, but seriously, we try to decide on a “robot silhouette” before the end of week 1. It would take a considerable failure (or discovery) for us to change course from there. From there we just keep refining the details.
After that, we set deadlines for different mechanisms. Something like the chassis is decided by like, day 3 (now with COTS swerve, it’s basically decided pre-season). Barring a game that necessitates additional considerations (like an under bumper intake…), we want to get a chassis being fabricated ASAP, so that we can start driving it and start attaching our prototypes to it. Other mechanisms are obviously further out from that and depend heavily on prototyping.
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By the week after kickoff we should have at least an alpha proto bot going. Historically, we lock in the rough ideas within the first week, but locking in the final design can take awhile (our shooter took the majority of the 6 weeks of build season actually to refine to the point we were ok with it). This coming season we’re planning to lock in our first go at the game as usual, but with more experienced CAD force and about double the amount of mechanical (experienced) hands, we’re planning to start prototyping immediately, and then at the second weekend we would start locking in our design as we go. I’d say 10 days after kickoff for robot arch is solid for any team just like @Pizzatc has written that 2659 does. However, for each piece, especially your main scoring mechanism, you should definitely take some more time for that to make sure it works, and prototype a bit to optimize that design.
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That’s a great question, as there is no direct answer. Our team just had a very successful season due to our constant modifications to our bot. With about 4 different robot re-designs we completed a slightly janky bot for the Heartland regional. Even with all of these re-designs we (of course) had our elevator malfunction. In our case we would have needed at least a week to test and ‘finalize’ our bot, but it does depend on your team’s capabilities and how much time the programmers need to have the robot working to the team’s standard.
Usually around Einstein Finals Match 2. Sometimes 3.
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Locked in at the start of foc in 2017 or no?