2.007^2 Design
In 2.007, the design process is even more important than the final product. Students are required to keep detailed engineering notebooks with their thoughts, calculations, analyses, and thought processes throughout the term. The engineering notebook is a complete record of the design process that the student went through, including preliminary designs, decision matrices, re-engineering, analysis, calculations, and technical drawings. The process went through several major stages.
1. Strategy
The first step of the process was to determine which strategy could most effectively take advantage of the scoring algorithm. I brainstormed every possible way to score or play defense, came up with a simple mechanism and a list of pros, cons, and countermeasures for each. In the end I decided to score pucks in the upper bins (mostly for the coolness factor) and to build a robust, defensive robot.
2. FRDPARRC
Next, each preliminary design had to be "FRDPARRRC"ed. The acronym covers all of the useful design considerations: functional requirements, design parameters, analysis, references, recsources, risks and countermeasures. By considering each of the details for every design, we'd be able to make a more informed choice about the best possible design.
3. Final Design
Once we chose the best design among the preliminary choices, we were able to focus more attention on doing a detailed FRDPARRRC on the final design.
4. Re-engineering
After that, if you're like me, you suddenly realize that your final design makes no sense. Why go through so much trouble to build a telescoping arm out of precision machined Delrin when you can just use a four-bar linkage out of sheet metal? Exactly. Now you have your final design.
5. Solid Modeling!
After that, you marry yourself to SolidWorks for many, many hours and turn out a super awesome solid model of your final design. It helps you figure out where things go and hopefully lets you catch glaring geometric impossibilities before you spend tons of time maching parts that can't exist in the real world. =)