Notebook is crucial. If you search on the vex website there is an example. But thats not very good. It’s a good starter but not my favourite. Like the first comment document everything and why you did what you did on that day. They like that. Also make sure it has some nice colors and is vibrant and neat because most judges like neatness. Also do something that stands out. Like have a page or 2 on why your team has that name or a mini fact file on everymember because i find the lay out is the same. Build pages. 3 - 5 design ideas. Experiments to see if it works. If you have something cool it seems better.
Heya!
Notebooking is an important process in robotics. You need to document your failures, triumphs, and all Ideas formulated for your Bot and Team. I use V5, so I’m not too familiar with IQ’s competiton setup and the like, but I have been to a few competitions for V5. What the judges like to see is detailed notebooks. Write down all that you did that day, but make sure to not be too simple; i.e.: “Today we built our drivetrain”. Make it more detailed; " Today we built our H-Drive drivetrain. We used 4 motors and a 16 - 8 gear ratio for speed." Not only will you do well with the judges, but you will also earn respect from your teachers. Anyways, best of luck this year! Hope that this helped.
-Noah
Thanks for the reply! This digital notebook is very helpful! Just to make sure, your team used the official template, correct? By the way, how do teams submit digital notebooks?
Thank you for the reply! Unfortunately, I didn’t add the design process, since I started building before starting the notebook. However, I am planning to add design processes for the other parts of the bot, and the other stuff too.
Thanks for the reply! About your mini fact file, we have 2 members, is that a problem? Unfortunately, I started notebooking after starting to build my first bot. How should I make up for this? Thank you!
Hello! Your information makes so much sense, this is really helpful! I will use this to make my notebook better. Thank you!
Please try and use a single post to respond, you can quote what you are responding to as I did above. Thanks, moderators.
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Hello,
Does quoting someone work like replying? In other terms, does it notify them when it is posted? If not, is there a way to reply to multiple people? Thanks!
SA510,
I see the engineering notebook as not only just something you do to help you win awards, but as a way to gain the thinking and skills of an engineer. By writing an engineering notebook, you ensure that your team is adhering to the engineering design process and resource management—the skills that make a truly good engineer. You also learn how to convey this information effectively in writing, which is a critical skill for practically every job. These are what GRSF/RECF seek to promote by even offering these awards in the first place.
As you are beginning your engineering notebook, they are some resources I highly recommend you refer to:
- The official engineering notebook rubric (how the judges evaluate your notebook), interview rubric, and overall guide to judging. Anyone will tell you understanding the rubrics is the absolute best thing you can do for your notebook, so you can be sure to record everything the judges are looking for. Assuming you are competing in VEX/GRSF, and not RECF, this is the link: https://library.globalrobotics.org/hc/en-us/categories/51091129713172-Judging
- The Purdue SIGBots Over Under engineering notebook explanation video. Many would call this the gold standard of publicly available engineering notebooks. Just as research on other robots can inspire ideas for your own, looking at other notebooks can give you a sense of how you can best document your own team’s robot development. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k_QbcJR2J5o&pp=ygURU2lnYm90c3Mgbm90ZWJvb2s%3D&ra=m
- Diana Gale’s series of videos. She does an excellent job of explaining the importance of the engineering design process and proper documentation. https://m.youtube.com/@ddgale?ra=m
The highest level teams are an engineering team working on a robotics project, not a robotics team working on an engineering notebook.
-– Rich Miller in a 2021 RECF Summit
Yes, we used the official template for the cover page and for the innovate form, as well as most of the pages. There is no specific way to arrange pages and images, but the innovate form has to be arranged properly, in the right place, etc. Refer to official rules for more information. Teams share their notebooks with their coach, leaving them as an editor. The coach can then share the notebook with judges, keeping them as a veiwer. Remember not to share your notebook with other teams or untrustworthy people during the season. The notebook I shared is from pushback (2025-26), so I can share it freely.
Is it 2 member meaning you and someone else or 2 other members. Sometimes only 2 member in total can be a problem like not being able to load. if you are starting with a hero bot. Just say that you are experimenting with it. If you are starting with some of your own ideas have at least 3 robot ideas. What my team did was we brainstormed different parts of a robot that we must have to be successful. And we did 3 ideas for each thing so we could mix and match the robot ideas. We decieded with a 2 motor chassis with a 6 bar lift for level four. Wich is 2 motors and a dispenser for intaking and outaking. It is very compact. So try to have as many ideas as you can.
Ngl, this is very helpful. I will show this to the beginers next year.
It helps a lot for my team and keeps everything organized.
What do you mean by innovate award stolen from you guys?
In my experience in notebooking, these are my takeaways, from the absolute beginning.
- Start with a template. You need to find one that matches your notebooking style, and multiple template pages for different types of pages.
- Start with table of contents, do not put page numbers on them, as they are not pages
- Make team bios, introducing your team and their roles
- Make a page that explains how your pages are laid out, called a sample page
- Then start with the first step of the edp, define the problem, just explain the game, objects, rules (not all rules just the essential ones) your ideas for robots, skills, and teamwork matches. Explain to your fullest extent, but don’t make a wall of text. Make bullet points, lists, etc
- Then list some of your ideas, go into extreme detail on how it works, if using pictures that are not your’s, cite it. Use cad models, annotations, and follow the rubric (use drawings too!) I suggest 3-5 ideas
- Chose the best one using decision matrix (grading it on different attributes). Explain why you did what you did
- Build logs, this is your most extensive part. Every day explain what you did, exactly what you did, and why. For example: (I’m in v5 by the way) first, we want to know if a 25 hole or 30 hole c-channel is better, so we made a pro-con table here: (imagine a chart or table, explaining why 25 hole is better) Procedure: we took a 40 hole c-channel, cut it with a saw to 25 holes, then, using our cad found that it needed to be by the wheel pod, so we…
- Testing and code. I use code v5 python, so we explain where we got the idea (cite where using links and urls), explain what the idea is, give the complete code, and highlight the most part that you had the idea about. For testing, do scientific method, to the tee (no exceptions)
- Improve based on testing, reflect on testing.
- Comp analysis, do this by listing how you did every match and what you did right and wrong, list all of the scores, and then do a analysis on your team at the event, and the tournament champions (if not you). Do the same thing for skills, and list some skills route you noticed
- Finally, list how you think your robot preformed, what was good and bad, and do the same for your cad and drawings.
- Repeat the process
Notes:
No wall of text, use bullet points and sections
Make colored markers explained in step 4, which shows what step of the edp the page is. Of course you will have multiple pages with the same colored marker
Make a page once a week with a bill of materials and weekly reflections, as long as reflections on a team timeline for the time it takes to make the robot.
That’s bad advice and overall all advice in this thread is crappy. With notebooking your goal is engineering documentation. Read the judging rubric to understand what you really need to do instead of trusting random forum users who admit thier bad notebooks
At our state championship, we were very very likely to win the innovate award, and multiple judges said that we were going to win it, as the only other team that could win it had their innovate submission not on their robot. Somehow, they won it and went to worlds, triple qualifying them through skills, tournament champions, and innovate. We didn’t get to go to worlds, ending our season. My team is still bitter about it, but yk, water under the bridge. 
I disagree with you, the advice here and on most of the posts in this thread are actually pretty sound, though you are correct, reading the judging rubric is very important. In my first years of robotics, the judging rubric seemed very daunting and confusing to me, so the advice from other people on with their own experience is typically very helpful for somone just starting out.
Two things:
- I actually found all of this advice from everyone (Including you) as great advice. I think it will help me to be better in my notebooking
- No one said they had bad notebooks. If they did, they can learn from their mistakes and make better ones. That is the whole point of the engineering design process. Yes, the judging rubric is important, but through trial and error everything will become neat and organized.
I hope you really understand that none of the advice here is bad. These people, this site, it’s all for people to come together and learn. Learn from triumphs, failures, and most importantly, each other.
Thank you for an opportunity to share what this community is truly about,
-Noah
Ok the second half of the thread does have some useful advice especially from discombobulatedfrog and Indianaforever, however a lot of the other advice is extremely shallow level and would not get you any awards. Especially your advice on " Today we built our H-Drive drivetrain. We used 4 motors and a 16 - 8 gear ratio for speed." that is very basic. With any award winning notebook you would go through edp, planning(cad) then extensive build logs. Your notebook should generally be detailed enough so the judges can follow your exact steps you used to get to the final design, from the exact reasoning behind it to the tuning, testing and adjustments. Your writing engineering documentation not a cutesy journal of how your building your robot.