I would like to see some notebook heavy teams notebooks. A structure to team could help. We want to do an amazing job documenting our robot next year. This year most of our teams had basically no notebook except one that was crazy with it.
Search on the forum for the 515R notebook. Worlds design award and probably the best notebook Iāve ever seen.
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A newer thread discussing important notebooking strategies in the videos is found here. There are lots of different things you can do to help improve your notebook. Here is the rubric you will be judged on for your notebook.
I would recommend joining the robot notebookers server and checking the resources channel.
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Reminder that one item thatās supposed to be in the notebook, and is missing from 99.9% of themā¦ a complete photo build log that can be followed to recreate the robot. I would consider dimensions on axles, spacers, bolts, etc to be part of that.
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Thanks for all of this, itās been very helpful. There is a lot we can do and a lot that we have thought about on how to improve these teams layouts. I do have a question tough. Like I looked at 515rās notebook for spin up but it is massive, we do all of our vex in a semester basically. Should we try to get a bit of summer so we have more time to CAD our robot and get a notebook that big? For like an average state competition how big is your notebook? We feel ready to go further but our team focuses a lot on getting the robot to be its best, that notebook would take a lot of time. Should we have designated people for the notebook? We have a formula from our engineering classes that we will probably use and just make slight changes to get the best notebook. We have it set up with timed entries about what you are doing then and there. Because of this we canāt do end of week or after meeting notebooking. What should we do?
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paragraphs are our friends
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notebook that won state was 64 pages
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yes, start in summer, actually right after next seasonās ārevealā
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the notebook is a log, summary, planning, etc all rolled into one. this does not mean longer=better.
Go read the rubric for notebooks. Make notes. Then read it again. Have ALL your teammates do this also. Then, re-read 515r notebook and compare to yours.
You need to quickly, accurately, and concisely convey the rubricās requirements to the notebook READER/JUDGE.
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The rubric tells you what they want. So many people miss the puffball points.
- Explain the game (no, do not cut and paste it)
- Explain exactly what your strategy is. It helps if you have a strategy with
1 A partner that canāt move
2 A partner that can do ABC
3 A partner that can do XYZ - Explain the brainstorming you did to get to multiple designs
- Explain the robot that you are going to build to meet the design and perform the strategy.
So many notebooks on page 1. āSo we started building a modified H drive and put a shooter on topā. Just want to cry.
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These last couple of posts are great advice. Thank you @Foster and @turbodog . Iād like to add some points too.
Make it easy for the judge to give you all the easy points. Especially for the EDP criteria. I color-coded my notebook this year and we did win an excellence award. If the ref has to go fishing in your notebook to give you points, that is not a good sign.
It canāt be stressed enough how important organization is. Pick a ātemplateā for your organization, and stick with it. I use the pre-made template from RECF, and it works great. Simple and effective.
Less is (sometimes) more. When I see a paragraph post on the forums that is more than 10 lines, I donāt even bother reading it, unless itās from someone I know. Big text walls are not cool. Use paragraph breaks, pictures, and diagrams. This makes your notebook more visually appealing.
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I know you wanted to type Judge in here 
Do you mean the template found here? https://kb.roboticseducation.org/hc/en-us/articles/8369508470935-VEX-Digital-Notebook-Templates
If so that was created by the VEX digital / artistic / advertising team and Bob M3. @Lascap and I had a chance to add ideas and sample pages to it. It was pretty fun to watch a good chunk of it appear in almost real time.
Then youāve missed a lot of my posts. 
You have great points on the formatting. The books with the 1/4" graph paper are hard to read text off of, itās like reading a crossword. In those cases, blank lines and indentation can really help.
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Quite a hefty assumptionā¦
Nah Iām kidding. Thatās what I meant to write
Yep.
Nah. You use paragraph breaks and intentional writing.
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I would add that a bigger notebook is not necessarily the better notebook. Diagraming, Gantt Charts, and other things are almost always more useful than 10 pages with only words. Although, some judges in my area will see a big notebook, and automatically think it is better. I would recommend making a big notebook but with plenty of diagrams and useful pictures and similar things for the judges. 
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