Note: CAD has not been used within 4311 to build any robots. This information is a suggestion based off of other teams who use CAD

Introduction

Build season is an important time for all members and it's no different for CAD, however the most important time for CAD are weeks 2 and 3. The build season for CAD can be separated into 3 portions; Prototype CAD, Robot CAD, and Building Help.

Prototype CAD

Week 1 will begin with CAD attending all of the design meetings. CAD will help make drawings of designs, and help to see which designs that people will come up with will work. After the meetings are done, and prototyping has begun, prototype CAD will begin. CAD will take prototypes that other members have built and turn them into refined designs in CAD. Should 4311 have the resources, these refined designs will be built and tested. Once all prototypes have had refined designs modeled, CAD can move onto robot CAD.


Robot CAD

Robot CAD is the portion of build season in which CAD begins modeling the actual robot that 4311 will build. At this point, all CAD members will be assigned a mechanism or subassembly that they will be responsible for modeling. It will become their responsibility to ensure that the part can both be built with the current tools, or is easy to CNC from the various manufacturing locations available to us. Upon completion of the full robot CAD, the subteam will begin creating drawings of each individual part that needs to be manufactured by hand, containing all of the information required to recreate the part. The drawings will then be printed and will be ordered according to their importance in the design.

Building Help

This is the final portion of build season for CAD. During this phase, most CAD work will stop with CAD members transitioning to becoming experts on the mechanisms which they modeled. Should members have questions, they can approach the member who is listed on the drawing to ask what should be done. All questions can be escalated to the CAD lead, however it is preferable that the members who modeled the part is responsible for assisting in figuring out the part, as generally they will have a better knowledge in their parts than the CAD lead. After assembly, when modification need to be made to the robot to improve it, CAD will make sure to come back and update the model in order to not only have an up to date model, but also to be able to make models using those new features should it be required.