So it has come to my attention that you are supposed to cross out the empty space in your EDN with crossing lines.
To take it from this site “Never leave blank spaces…Simply draw lines through any blank spaces at the same time you are making your entries.”
This is also shown in the demo pages of the notebook provided by the recf.
I would assume this is primarily so that if the notebook is used as a legal document, then people know that only the original text is there, and no one wrote stuff in in the blank spaces. But vex notebooks aren’t really legal material…
I have never done this, but I was wondering if I should be. How important is crossing out the whitespace in the notebook?
I did that for the notebook I submitted at 2020 Maryland states (we won excellence). I simply drew a diagonal line across the empty space then sign my name and date
Yeah this is good. You should cross out empty space. I don’t think it’s technically required, but many of the top-tier notebooks I’ve seen have them and my team does it too.
Some teams leave blank space in order to paste in pictures / drawings / graphs / CAD renderings, etc. Once they are in place then X or Slash the space. A little common sense says if the space is bigger than 10-12 sq inches (ie 3 x 3", 2 x 5" ) then slash, smaller than that is creating a flurry of slashed boxes on your page.
The other thing to think about is if you are slashing a lot of space out in your notebook you might want to consider writing more?
Honestly, I see from this thread that a lot of people here don’t understand why crossing out blank spaces is a thing.
In a professional engineering notebook, it’s crucial and strict (for IP reasons and whatnot) to keep the notebook in chronological order, without the possibility of somebody going back and modifying work in the past. Hence, one of these ways of preventing modifications to past documentation is crossing out blank spaces so new things can’t be written there.
VRC follows similar principles for engineering notebooks, and many teams follow similar practices of crossing out blank areas, half-signing pictures, having a bound notebook without loose leaf pages, and signing/dating the bottom of each page to indicate that their notebook is in chronological order. That being said, I don’t believe newer engineering firms these days do this as much given that digital documentation and time-stamps are a thing.
The answer is complicated. While many on the forum will tell you that crossing out blank space is important, some will dispute that and there is a pretty big reason why. As someone who has taken a PLTW engineering course, I am fully aware of all the proper engineering notebook practices one should take to ensure that their documentation is at legal standards (for receiving patents). And, although I was very tempted to use these practices in my notebook, the reality is that the judges at your tournaments are volunteers, first and foremost. Not all of them have to be engineers. Nor is crossing out blank space included in the engineering notebook rubric for judges. This may vary between regions, but from my experience as a Northern California VRC competitor (which is arguably a relatively competitive region), judges are more focused on aesthetics than practicality. Of course, judges do not look solely for aesthetics, but the notebook they’re reading should include everything on the rubric while also looking attractive to the reader. Simply put, the judges only really read your notebook for a few minutes because they have so many to go through, so you have to leave a good impression on them with the look of your notebook. If you combine both of these factors; the judge reading your notebook not being an engineer and the judges being mostly focused on aesthetics; crossing out blank space would actually look… kind of ugly… at least to someone who doesn’t understand the reason behind why you’re crossing it out. To someone who isn’t an engineer or doesn’t understand the common practices, it can be confusing and make your notebook less attractive, and that alone could be the difference maker that loses you the Design Award or Excellence Award. So, the answer is, I really don’t know. It’s good practice for actual engineering, but it isn’t included in the rubric. The choice is yours.