Does anybody have tips for a journal? I am new and i wanted to know some ways to keep the journal nice
Use pictures and the engineering process.
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Checkout notebooking.vex.com which has tips for new teams about documenting their designs and builds.
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The BLRS Wiki also has a breakdown of the essential sections of the Engineering Notebook
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yo that is a fire resource!
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can CAD screenshots be used as “sketches”? I would imagine not but it would be interesting to see AutoCAD designs instead of sketches, especially if your team has 0 artist capability.
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Are you asking as if this were a question about rules? If so, then you probably haven’t seen the engineering notebook rubric against which your notebook would be evaluated by the judges. You will find that here: https://www.roboticseducation.org/documents/2022/03/engineering-notebook-rubric.pdf/
The common sense answer, of course, is “of course”, document your work in any way you think is appropriate. It is not uncommon for a notebook to be loaded with CAD drawings. And of course, you do not need to limit yourself to AutoCAD, because educational licenses are available for most of the commercial CAD software, including high-end packages like SolidWorks, OnShape, and even UGNX.
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We have a fairly new article written about importing inventor models into your notebook for some help.
Your notebook can really be whatever you want it to be though so the answer is yes. We have found that some quick drawings of general robot design are often helpful to start but depending on team dynamic, it can be pretty appropriate to jump right to CAD as long as you show the consideration of various ideas. ie, don’t just CAD a flywheel without talking about catapults or linear punchers.
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This article is one of my favorites, can’t place my finger on why, though…
To Max’s point, it’s honestly easy to sketch something out if you don’t overcomplicate it. Not every sketch has to be three dimensional; if you suck at making 3D sketches, just make a multi-view drawing of multiple 2D views with the isometric view excluded. Additionally, if the notebook is digital, you could whip something up pretty easily in Google Drawings since it uses familiar geometric shapes instead of being freehand.
I personally think this is sometimes true, especially if everyone on your team absolutely sucks at drawing but is incredibly adept with CAD software. One thing I will say, though, is that it is arguably more productive as far as notebook content goes if you separate a sketched prototype and a CAD model of a prototype because you’re introducing another step into your design process that you can then write about. If you’re given the opportunity to write about more stuff, and that stuff is actually meaningful to your design process, that’s something definitely worth making an entry about. I think it would be a pretty smooth transition to go from a sketch, to making the sketch a reality in the virtual world, and finally to making the prototype itself tangible in the real world.
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Good to share amazing and informative tips. I hope it might be helpful for me also to create a good journal. Different software is also available and thinks CAD is best.