How long do you guys think an engineering notebook should be? I know there isn’t a set number, but I wanted to see what the community thought. Feel free to comment below
The more the better for the judges, add lots of photos it takes up space and the judges love it.
That is not necessarily true, you want a good quality notebook, not necessarily big. I helped judge notebooks and I found that most people that tried to have a big notebook failed at using the design process. They were trying to fill it up, not learn from it. Ideally you want your notebook to be as full as your ideas and plans for your robot. Pictures were good in the notebook, but too many pictures just got boring.
Totally agreed but pictures are very helpful but this past year I think that my tam made the mistake of not enough photos and to much text.
Exactly what @Robotnerd just said. You are not documenting design and manufacturing of a nuclear submarine with thousands of subsystems, by hundreds of subcontractors, over the 10 year period.
Most teams are doing 2-3 iterations of a relatively simple robot with 2-3 subsystems.
Judges want to see clarity and not a bloat. Judges want to see a good balance of text, sketches, and pictures.
Some of the best notebooks I’ve seen were around 100 pages or less for the period of 5-6 months and included pictures, diagrams, and CADs, all used in great moderation.
For judges it is important to see that you understand what are the most important diagrams and the most important pictures that convey your design evolution.
If judges see 5 almost identical pictures of the robot that you took every day of the week to fill the space, they are not going to be impressed.
However, if they see one big picture and four zoomed in component pictures with diagrams explaining why those pictures are important to understand where you are moving in your design process, that will be a completely different story.
At the end of the day, judges need to go through the rubric and see that you consistently apply every aspect of the Engineering Design Process listed there throughout the evolution of your robot.
It is just important to find a balance that shows your use of the design process.
@technik3k I agree with all of this!
Exactly, The point is, only put pictures into the notebook if it is applicable to what you are writing and designing in the notebook.
@MichelleY I think you might have something to contribute here.
I would say that between 50 and 150 pages is a good balance. The number of pages in a notebook is difficult to measure, since the engineering notebook that most people use (book factory) only has approximately 7" x 8" of writing space per page because of margins in an 8" x 10" notebook, while other notebooks are 9" x 11" with no margins. Overall, it’s your decision for whether you want to write only the important details or write everything that happened, but your notebook is judged on how well you show that you used the design process while building your robot.
Too many pages is a bad thing. Every judge I’ve asked wants a straightforward well-organized notebook, but it doesn’t have to be a thousand pages. My team won excellence with a notebook that, if I remember correctly, was only about 50 pages.
tp 2019 - 640 something
tt 2020 - 370 something maybe more idk dont have the notebooks with me:(
I personally don’t think the page number matters that much. I think the quality of what is written inside matters more. You want to show your design process in the notebook and it shouldn’t be filled with random “fluff”. some teams might only build their robot once and never redo it or have minimal problems. So their notebook might have less pages. But other teams might go through multiple iterations and come across multiple problems, so by documenting that that team’s notebook might be larger.
Our notebook was around 200 pages last year and we never won a single design or excellence award. Now, I know this is because we didn’t clearly state and elaborate on our design process. Our notebook this season will likely be a lot shorter, but we plan to follow and record our design process with much more clarity.
Where’s 0, since I know some teams just don’t do the engineering notebook? 
One thing to note is that the Engineering Notebook is not a journal or picture diary. Although a well-done Engineering Notebook should note all of the major changes done to the robot, those changes should reflect the design process above anything else.
IIRC, for TT, our notebook was around 140 pages, and the brevity was enough to impress the judges at Worlds.
Worlds was cancelled though
I meant TP; blame VEX for having two games in a row being two words long and starting with the same letter.