so we have a bad notebook. it has really vague photos and explanations (from the beginning of the season) but we started to take more photos etc, still not good enough. how do i salvage it because we cant even justify our decisions because they were wrong. so another question, how do we justify wrong decisions which we learnt about later on in the season
Can you send an example page? Or if you want the whole file for us to help you
Hey @apap8,
Like @Gigabyte said, I can’t provide exact help on your situation without knowing what your notebook really looks like, but I can provide some general tips.
we cant even justify our decisions because they were wrong
That actually sounds like a great place to start! You could twist this to make it sound like you learned. Talk about how you had this logic at the beginning, but after researching, you learned about how it was wrong and utilized this information to improve. You might want to include a page or so about this. Cite sources, maybe show a few diagrams or something.
Then, you can work on improving the notebook itself. I think it’s actually in the rubric that entries must be chronologically ordered, but if your notebook is that bad, I would honestly go back to the beginning. Start with a game analysis. Time and resource management is always welcome, too.
After that, it’s up to you on general entries. You can make them better by adding details (e.g., moving back the aligner by a number of holes or changing the gear ratio to something else). If you don’t have access to these details, I’d try your best to resort to images. If you made a major improvement on your chassis gear ratio, for example, try to find an old picture of your chassis.
And, make sure to quantify your reasoning. If you made this change, how’d you decide on it? Did you analyze data? Add that data. Did you learn about a new theory? Add a diagram.
You can also check out great posts on the forum for more tips:
Then you can also look at example award-winning notebooks. I, for one, love 515R’s Spin-Up notebook.
And, most importantly, look at the rubric. From there you will know key criteria and steps of the EDP that you must document.
TLDR: Focus on adding the numbers, models, and exact justification to entries. If you need something, LMK. 
@haonp had a great answer, please refer to them
I personally recommend to make comparison pages- where you say “oh this was a page from my notebook that described how my robot was, and it wasn’t as good as it is now!” and describe how it got better than what it was before. Maybe add updates to past entries and speak of how some things have majorly (or minimally) benefited your team.
What I do not recommend is making stuff up. Engineering is not just building but it is also logging- explaining what you did so one who won’t understand but wants to- can.
: ) hope that helps
Sounds like great advice. just a question, would judges not look at part one and think its bad - say i wrote comparisons etc
Also say we didn’t take many photos, but i explain what we built through drawings/diagrams is that fine? And how do i make drawings - any good apps etc?
I think it would depend a lot on the judge, but yes, they would probably think it is bad. That’s why I’d follow @71300ffical’s idea of making comparison pages. You could add these comparison pages or an explanatory page to the front.
Yes, that’s okay, but I’d try your best to find as many photos as you can. Drawings are great, I usually use Notability. You can also CAD and make diagrams using Onshape.