Engineering Notebook
The engineering notebook is necessary for many judged awards, and is very helpful when building a robot. This notebook is where teams put all their robot designs, prototypes, and ideas. One of the goals of FIRST and FIRST Tech Challenge is to recognize the engineering design process and the journey that a Team makes during the phases of the problem. Throughout the process of designing and building a Robot, teams will come across obstacles, this is where Teams will use an Engineering Notebook to write out their design ideas.
Judges review a Team’s Engineering Notebook to better understand the journey, design, and Team as a whole. The Engineering Notebook is a complete documentation of the Team’s Robot design as well as chronicles the time spent doing research, outreach, Team meetings, and plans for growth. This documentation should include sketches, discussions and Team meetings, design evolution, software development, processes, obstacles, and each Team member’s thoughts throughout the journey for the entire season. They use what they see in teams notebooks evaluate teams and give awards.
Judges review a Team’s Engineering Notebook to better understand the journey, design, and Team as a whole. The Engineering Notebook is a complete documentation of the Team’s Robot design as well as chronicles the time spent doing research, outreach, Team meetings, and plans for growth. This documentation should include sketches, discussions and Team meetings, design evolution, software development, processes, obstacles, and each Team member’s thoughts throughout the journey for the entire season. They use what they see in teams notebooks evaluate teams and give awards.
Resources |
Engineering Notebook Tips |
Our Velocity Vortex Notebook (West Super Regional Think Award)
In the Velocity Vortex season, we had eight sections divided into two different physical notebooks.
Below are the actual files we printed out as well as our approach to the section.
Why did we win the Think Award?
This is a question we have gotten a few emails about since last year. We obviously weren't in the room when the decision was made, but in no particular order, here are some of the things we emphasize in our process (ie what makes us stand out). A lot of these aren't visible in the documents because we add them after printing.
Summary Page & Tabbing
Our summary page is color coded, and we mark all of the listed pages with a tab in a corresponding color. The sections in the engineering section are divided by sub assemblies of the robot. We have a simple CAD drawing of our robot with each sub assembly color coded as well.
Our Non Engineering Sections
We organize our outreach just as strategically as our engineering sections. (If you have specific questions about this ask us)
"Evidence"
In addition to what is in the file, we had hundreds of drawings, flyers, and other pieces of paper to paint a picture of our team and our journey. We save every piece of paper that we come in contact with including sign up sheets from outreach events, or lists from a random meeting. This way we have our polished final product along with thank you notes from FLL teams and pieces of scrap paper that prove we are real people.
Below are the actual files we printed out as well as our approach to the section.
Why did we win the Think Award?
This is a question we have gotten a few emails about since last year. We obviously weren't in the room when the decision was made, but in no particular order, here are some of the things we emphasize in our process (ie what makes us stand out). A lot of these aren't visible in the documents because we add them after printing.
Summary Page & Tabbing
Our summary page is color coded, and we mark all of the listed pages with a tab in a corresponding color. The sections in the engineering section are divided by sub assemblies of the robot. We have a simple CAD drawing of our robot with each sub assembly color coded as well.
Our Non Engineering Sections
We organize our outreach just as strategically as our engineering sections. (If you have specific questions about this ask us)
"Evidence"
In addition to what is in the file, we had hundreds of drawings, flyers, and other pieces of paper to paint a picture of our team and our journey. We save every piece of paper that we come in contact with including sign up sheets from outreach events, or lists from a random meeting. This way we have our polished final product along with thank you notes from FLL teams and pieces of scrap paper that prove we are real people.
Team Section
We use this section for our team bios and the bio of any person who we came into contact with more than once (coaches, parents, random mentors, people we worked with on outreach projects). Our bios say what we do on the team, our favorite part of FIRST and if we have decided to pursue a STEM career bc of the program, some things we do outside of robotics, and our future plans. In all of the other bios we try to outline how exactly every adult helped us along the way. We want to emphasize that we do the work and that we understand how each of our mentors have helped us. This year, we're going to add a section about all of the teams we have a relationship with (FLL, FTC, and FRC). |
Business Section
We after our Bylaws section, we have the signature of everyone on the team from the bottom of the sheet (Everyone signed in like crayon and we cut them out and glued them to a piece of construction paper). |
Outreach Section
In this section we had so many pieces of evidence inserted between pages. Pamphlets, thank you cards, printed out emails. At all of our big events, we either have a team member in charge of taking pictures for the entire time or we hire some sophomore wannabe photographer to take good pictures for $20. We also emphasize why we do every event. Everything has a purpose; we don't just show up at everything we can and call it outreach. |
Finance Section
We honestly have no idea how to do anything related to money management but we do all of our own fundraising and we understand where our money comes from and tell the judges that. |
Preseason/ Engineering Section
"Flip-able" Format Each entry has a brief task/summary column at the top, and we elaborate a lot more (with pictures and drawings) farther down. This way, when someone is flipping through the notebook trying to figure out how you came to your collection system design, they don't have to read more than like five words per page until they find the details they are looking for. Shoving our use of the Engineering Process in their Face We do this in two major ways (in addition to the obvious which is writing good entries). The sidebar in our daily entry section has all of the steps of the engineering process, and we go through and circle all of the steps we used during that entry (in pen). We also title each entry with something like "testing the sweeper," "prototyping collection systems," or "finalizing the frame." |
Table of Contents
Engineering Section - We can't find our preseason |
Programming Section
Our programmers don't like to write daily entries, so instead they discuss each part of our code in detail one at a time (this also makes it a lot easier to follow the journey without compromising the details). |
Programming Section
All of our code from last season is available on GitHub somewhere |
CAD Section
We have an entry about every piece that we use CAD for any reason. We reference the appropriate page in the engineering section and the engineering section references this section as well. |