Hi everyone, i have never really seen other peoples notebooks … as mentioned ages ago we have a massive booklet bound in an a3 folder … what methods to you use ? … and how many pages ? …
Our gateway notebook was: 48 pages (not included index/covers etc)
Our sack attack notebook is atm 67pages, and i am added to them alot …
thanks in advance !
Hey,
This was our first year of keeping a notebook. We do everything electronically, and scan in any drawings we want. We then add in other sections after, such as tactics and programming. We then print this all and keep in a large A4 folder
Hope this was of help
Ian
My team has historically kept our design notebook in a 3-ring binder. We maintain sections separated by tabs (e.g. Team Information, Design, Building, Programming, Strategy, Outreach, etc.). When we write the content varies.
We try to keep a journal over the season, but that doesn’t always work out. We’ve also found that judges don’t always have time to read over EVERY entry in the journal. Thus, we have a summary sheet at the beginning of the Design section. Often, we include a picture of the robot with “callout”-style bubbles that highlight features of our robot (“Light sensor for following lines” or “Pneumatic claw” or similar). We also include a short synopsis of why we chose our final design. If the judges want more details, they can look it up in the journal.
We also put sticky notes/tabs on entries/pages we want to show.
Include printouts of any CAD drawings you make of your robot or components (this, for some reason, really impresses judges… ;)). In your design interview, refer back to the notebook. Take pictures often and include these.
Include a printout of your code, and a short synopsis of the interesting features are. For example, if you use an LCD screen to select autonomous mode, highlight that.
In short: Divide your content into several sections, and start each section with a summary page. Judges are busy, so the more they can grasp “at a glance,” the better. Highlight what makes you different from other teams.
//Andrew
thanks … didn’t think of doing a summary section … with our notebook, this year it is all synced to the ftp for the website, so any of our team members can sync designs and the notebook to it via our tablets/phones/laptops …