Hello everyone,
We started the season by picking and planing the drivetrain. As a newly picked team leader I have very slight experience in management. However, I want to fill up the notebook. In brainstroming part, I’vent seen many ideas pop up, so there isn’t enough to compare and write pros and cons. Also, many team members get bored while doing this. How does your team manage the design process?
Thanks in advance!
Hi Bear,
There are a lot of topics & videos regarding notebooks and I recommend checking them out if you haven’t already.
Here is a topic that might be useful to you:
And another
And another
Firstly, I recommend developing design goals. It may take a while to do this and there are a multitude of ways to develop them effectively, but in essence I believe you should just weigh out the pros and cons of various game strategies and work it out with your teammates. A design brief should help a bit with this. Just remember that the game strategies you choose can drastically change your design goals. For example, a fast drivetrain has low torque, making it ineffective for heavy defense.
Secondly, take the necessary time to research a variety of things–including various mechanisms (like drivetrains) made by other people (make sure to give proper credit) and weigh out the pros and cons of each. Additionally, you can go further in-depth by researching how many motors it requires, any variants of the design, (i.e. you could turn a basic tank drive with omni wheels to include traction wheels in the center for more strength), and much more.
Then, once you have a general understanding of the various drives, you can begin to CAD some of your own out with the research your team made in mind and explain each drive in detail. Feel free the discussion of the drive’s velocity and it’s relation to gear trains, wheel sizes, friction, and of course, whatever else that’s necessary. You don’t need a million drivetrains to choose from, but the more (quality) options you have the better, IMO.
Finally, you can compare them with a decision/design matrix to analyze and compare them against each other. You can get a variety of statistics (i.e. cost, durability, velocity, etc.) to help this. It definitely shouldn’t be solely pros and cons.
Anyway, hope this helps.
Hi, Bear!
I totally sympathize with this dilemma— many people in VEX think of notebooking as tedious (which it isn’t! And it also earns you tons of awards if you do it right lol). If you are the team leader and everyone agrees on this, I think you should try assigning each team member something. (Like for example, write the pros and cons of a DR4B.) This ensures everyone contributes and gets the job done quicker. Oh, and make sure to put due dates on each assignment. Otherwise they might not finish it (I’ve learned the hard way).
About documenting the drivetrain— even if you don’t have many ideas, I recommend researching them (like @PowerSupply-72837A said) and putting a brief description of them on your notebook. As the Guide to Judging (GtJ) says, a good notebook “lists three or more possible solutions”. This is true for every subsystem, so don’t just decide and start building. Document why you chose the idea. Then, again, like @PowerSupply-72837A said, use a decision matrix and test if you can. I know (especially school teams) it can be hard to build multiple chassis at once and test them, but it does pay off. The GtJ says teams should “explain why the solution was selected through testing and/or a decision matrix”. If you can’t really test all those ideas and have more than 3, then I suggest you first narrow it down then test. (Explain why too).
By the way, here’s the link to the notebook rubric. https://kb.roboticseducation.org/hc/en-us/articles/4461349729047-Judging-Resource-Engineering-Notebook-Rubric
Remember to follow it!
Lastly, I recommend you take a look at 515R’s notebook from Spin Up. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HaW4U9oFkCO0W1oqMPX5Eugy24MAw_wm/view
It’s pretty lengthy, but reading through it will pay off. Keep in mind of page 20. It does pros and cons and a brief description of common chassis types.