Please refer to the official Guide to Judging for RECF Competitions:
Guide to Judging: Judging Engineering Notebooks – REC Library
As stated in the page above, the notebook should include these formatting elements:
- Team number on the cover/beginning of document
- A table of contents with entries organized for future reference
- Each page/entry chronologically dated and numbered, starting with the first team meeting
- Each page/entry contains information noting the student author(s)
- All pages/entries intact; no pages/entries or parts of pages/entries removed or omitted; errors can be crossed out using a single line (so they can be seen) rather than erased or removed
- Permanently affixed pictures, CAD drawings, documents, examples of code, or other material relevant to the design process (in the case of physical notebooks, tape is acceptable, but glue is preferred)
- Each page/entry chronologically numbered and dated
- Notebook has evidence that documentation was done in sequence with the team’s individual design process
and must also contain this content:
- Provides a complete record of team and project assignments including team meeting notes, goals, decisions, and building/programming accomplishments
- Resource constraints including time and materials, are noted throughout
- Descriptions, sketches, and pictures of design concepts and the design process
- Observations and thoughts of team members about their design and their design process
- Records of tests, test results, and evaluations of specific designs or design concepts
- Project management practices including their use of personnel, financial, and time resources
- Notes and observations from competitions to consider in the next design iteration
- Descriptions of programming concepts, programming improvements, or significant programming modifications
- Enough detail that a person unfamiliar with the team’s work would be able to follow the logic used by the team to develop their design, and recreate the robot design
Your engineering notebook should not be a journal, but as seen above, it should include “team meeting notes, goals, decisions, and building/programming accomplishments”.
Yes. Experiments & gannt charts are ways to show your Selection/Testing and Planning phases, respectively.
There are multiple notebooks released on this forum that have won multiple awards. I suggest referring to those for formatting inspiration & advice. I have linked some of them below.