Our team is out for the season after we didn’t do so well at the Texas Region 5 World Qualifiers. It’s my freshman year and I was the main builder. I’m taking off season build master classes to enhance build quality and overall mechanism knowledge. What’s everyone else’s plan for their off-seasons and is there anything else I should be doing?
1 Like
I intend on creating a better plan for what I’d like the robot to be. For example, doing more research over the summer and learning how to design a CAD for the robot (and hopefully actually using it). Also, I’d like to look over my past designs and the past matches my team partook in and look at the areas we really struggled in that we could’ve improved upon; learning from my mistakes.
Of anything I said, you should learn from your mistakes, it’s one of the most powerful tools you have since you can look back and think about things in retrospect.
1 Like
Me personally, Im experimenting with optimal configurations and speeds for 4 motor drives. I miss the days of hypercomplex robots that require 22+ watts outside of the drive, and I hope the GDC takes things in that direction. Obviously in a late season scenario It would be advisable to use PTO’s and diffarentials, so if you are willing to bet on such a developement happening then maybe your best bet is to look at things like that.
Im a middle school team and im planning on cadding a robot for next year so my builder can build it. This year i was the team leader and will be next year as well, but i wont be building or notebooking anymore. I will also be watching the game video multiple times, read the game manual multiple times, and watch early season builds like stratford robotics did.
1 Like
This off-season I’m gonna be grinding notebook heavily. I mainly do note booking and help with programming and strategy. This next year I want my notebook to be at least 300 pages.
1 Like
It’s good you are striving to make a better notebook, but remember page count doesn’t really matter. The only thing that matters is the quality of your documentation. I’ve seen notebooks with hundreds of pages, but the documentation is terrible, so they never win anything. As long as you are following the Engineering Design Process as well you can, and document every idea well, you should be fine. I don’t know if you are, but make sure that you add your code to your notebook too. Don’t just add your code verbatim though, be sure to document your code to show the judges what they are looking at. Even if your documentation is just adding comments in your code. Let me know if I can help at all! Good luck in 25-26!
2 Likes
i’m planning to learn how to CAD or convince someone on my team to learn how to CAD. I also want to learn how to code in PROS (i know some basic coding, but my team’s coder and i are planning on expanding our knowledge). since my organisation has done a pretty terrible job of training new people effectively in the past, i’m also going to create a curriculum for a training program to use once the next season starts in may.
non-vex stuff (since is the one time of year i really have time): start working on college essays, study for APs and catch up on sleep.
2 Likes
This year was my first year and the Vex Forum was my best resource. That being said, not many are willing to spend hours on the Vex Forum totaling two days. I suppose the following links would expedite the independent learning process.
New Team Starting Resources
Creating a Basic Drive
(in reality, these links actually also link other topics)
1 Like