We haven’t yet received our parts and we have an competition in 1-2 weeks. We have been cutting down our expectations and the things we need to get done. What would you say is the most time consuming part of the build, this way we can hopefully find the shortcuts and know what to direct our time towards to.
The most extensive part for me is figuring out special relations. If I’m missing one hole that I need free, I need to redesign a piece or something. This can be helped by using CAD to build your robot beforehand.
I assume you have a concept, but after the build, the tuning easily takes the longest time, especially with shooters.
I would spend some time looking at ri3d builds to see what people are able to get done. Usually simple robots without every component super optimized, maybe a slower drive train then they would prefer etc.
This robot was built by 2 people in 3 days and its still “reasonable” at playing the game. There are also a bunch of prototyping videos to show simple mechanisms we built in a few hours to test, early in the season requires a lot more time prototyping.
If you are on a budget in regards to time, do not be creative with how you build your robot, but spend a little bit of time looking at reveals for a good 30 minutes looking at simple designs. If you are unsure about how a mechanism works, ask questions on VEXForum because they can provide answers relatively quick and reliably. Building is my most time consuming part primarily because it takes a great deal of time to create something from mind, and for that reason you should definitely start out with a robot that is taken from the internet compared to figuring things out on your own. Seeing that you have 1-2 weeks, you should have enough time to build a robot no problem. You just have to be dedicated to do such, and not be tempted to be creative but just be simplistic.
The biggest time-waster/design-killer/mood-disorderer/uncertainty-factor has been our waiting on parts.
You might want to check out a post I made recently to check on any Vex shipment notices you might have received. You might be waiting on things that are actually in some kind of limbo.
https://vexforum.com/t/vex-shipments-that-never-really-happen/51649/1
plan absolutely everything beforehand so you don’t waste building time coming up with mechanisms.