How many notebooks per team?

VEX V5 General Discussion General Forum
#1

I’ve been reading a lot about how to setup a good notebook, but what I never see is how many notebooks you should have per team. Our team has been turning in three notebooks during competitions since we were DQ’d from judging one time for not having three. However, we were also criticized by the judges in another competition for having more than one. What’s the right way to go about this? Do we need three notebooks or just one?

#2

We don’t have great engineering notebooks but I belive you are supposed to work in one book till it’s full then move onto the next

#3

I couldn’t find a limit to how many notebooks you can have, but i dont think ive ever seen a team turn in more than one notebook. So I would just go with one.

#4

We have only ever used one notebook, i don’t really see the point of having 3 much less why on earth you would be DQ’d for not having 3. That seems very odd.

#5

If you read the guidelines for the notebook, it’s a little more clear what they expect. The Engineering Notebook (note the singular) is a single item, documenting the teams effort over time. Since you can’t know ahead of time how many pages you will fill, it can span multiple volumes. As a previous poster said, you fill them one after the other. You should be working out of a single volume at any given time. When its pages are filled, you can move to another volume. Pages are to be signed and dated as the work occurs, so a page in a later volume records events that happened after everything in any prior volume.

#6

Is there a link to these guidelines?

#7

Here is a link to a VEX engineering notebook you can purchase. Your coach should have gotten at least one copy of this notebook upon registering the first team for the year. The examples in the front of this book provide some useful guidance. (Click on “more views” in the link below to see a bit of what that looks like.) You are not required to use this notebook. As noted above, every organization which registers a team gets one complimentary notebook for the first team they register, so you don’t have to buy one to have access to the examples.

Here is the Judge Guide, which includes specific information about the Engineering Notebook. Page 9 has a description of what an Engineering Notebook should do. Page 15 has the Design Award Rubric.

Here is the Design Award Rubric in a separate document, which may be more convenient than the Judge Guide. Note that the first page is the specific rubric used by judges to evaluate the Engineering Notebook.

Here are several Q & A clarifications concerning the Engineering notebook, all answered by @Tarek Shraibati. He is the RECF authority on Engineering Notebooks.

https://vexforum.com/t/define-bound-notebook/42538/1
https://vexforum.com/t/answered-engineering-notebook-bonus/42327/1
https://vexforum.com/t/bound-notebooks-running-out-of-space/42568/1
https://vexforum.com/t/code-in-notebooks/42573/1
https://vexforum.com/t/vex-robot-goal-post-carrier/18349/1
https://vexforum.com/t/code-in-unbound-notebooks/42574/1
https://vexforum.com/t/why-do-we-need-an-engineering-notebook/43278/1
https://vexforum.com/t/is-the-engineering-notebook-mandatory/45288/1
https://vexforum.com/t/is-the-engineering-notebook-mandatory/45288/1
https://vexforum.com/t/engineering-notebook/45366/1
https://vexforum.com/t/design-notebook/45789/1

#8

Wow! that’s a lot of links, thanks!

#9

We currently have 5 130 page engineering notebooks and 2 programming notebooks where we have tracked and explained our code.
Having a very solid notebook has allowed us to earn 4 excellence awards and 2 design awards at 6 total events this season including our state tournament.

#10

lol who’s we?

#11

Most of JAR

#12