In past STEM-type challenges, the engineering notebooks count towards their final scores. Perhaps I have missed it in all of the information, is the score at the tournaments affected by the notebooks?
You need to have a notebook as per rules of the game. This is sort of like a workbook to show your work. The notebook content does not count towards final played match scores. It is taken into consideration (which may be represented as numeric scores) for other categories for the awards …
A good Engineering Notebook is the primary criteria for the Design Award. http://www.roboticseducation.org/documents/2014/10/vex-iq-design-award-rubric.pdf
A team’s performance in Design will influence how well they do in the judging for the Excellence.
Thanks to our VEX IQ community for sharing this helpful information regarding VEX IQ robot performance and judged awards. More details on the VEX IQ judging criteria are available in the VEX IQ Judges Guide on this Event Documents site.