CAD for Robotics Competitions

Matt_Shields

Are you using our CAD for Robotics Competitions course?  We'd love to know how it's going.  Share tips, post pictures of your models, tell us your favorite unit, or let us know how you've expanded or extended it.  

billy2

Go scan the public documents and search on robotics. There's a lot.

erik_orlowski

@Matt_Shields, the content looks really good. I'm running an FRC team and planning our preseason. Do you have any idea when the FRC version of these lessons will be available and if the FRC "assemble a robot" lesson will be using the MKCAD app that most FRC teams use?

Matt_Shields

@erik_orlowski, sorry I'm just seeing this but hopefully you saw that the FRC Assemble a Drivetrain lesson is out and it is using MKCAD!

kimberly_hogg

Hi team - I'm just looking at it now for some post-season development of our students. 

I'm in Intro to Onshape - VEX and am looking at the second part of the lesson, Navigating OnShape. In the subsection, "Teams and Designers Using Onshape", some existing robot models are shared, and the first instruction is "Move the scoop arm up and down," but I can't find any instructions on how to accomplish this. From my previous experience I understand this to involve animating a revolute fasten, but I don't see how to do this in the model, and I don't know how students will understand this from the directions so far in the lesson. Perhaps I sped past something important, but I don't want students who are self-pacing to be frustrated here. Any tips or help to guide a teacher and student here?

Matt_Shields

Good point.  We should add some clarification.  When you're in the lesson, you can click the "View their Onshape Document" link and that will open the robot.  It should open in the Assembly 1 tab.  You could scroll all the way to the bottom and animate one of the mates like Revolute 11.  Or, you should be able to just click and drag the arm.

wendy_stallings371

I'm looking through the intro to Onshape for FTC ti possibly use with my FTC team for training over the summer. Under the navigating the field page, there is no link to the FTC field and I couldn't find it by searching in Onshape. How do the students get to that activity?

Matt_Shields

If you go to the first unit, here:

https://learn.onshape.com/learn/article/intro-to-onshape

It's in the FTC document, here:

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/659db894619b28d801f7dc93/w/167de2e3cb212f633992f140/e/da9f53fc2e50424b9a57b28e

tyler_heasley

I'm an FRC student who's new to onshape. I was taking your FRC drive train lesson and noticed that quite a few things where different in the MKCad inserter; Especially when I was doing the section on westcoast drive, there where many parts in the instructions that I could not find in MKCad.

Matt_Shields

Thanks for reaching out!  Glad you're using Onshape with FRC and that you're going through our CAD for Robotics Competitions course.  I think you will find the MKCad library invaluable. 

Unfortunately, since we here at Onshape do not own the MKCad library, it sometimes updates without our knowledge.  Thanks for pointing it out and we will be sure to update our curriculum for the next release.  In the meantime, you should be able to make it through the curriculum with some substitutions. 

Please reach out with any other questions and good luck with the season!

MikeReillyLHS

Does anyone have a classtime estimate on how these lessons take? Not critical, just planning. Thanks!

Matt_Shields

On the main page for the course in the Learning Center, each unit has an approximate number of instructional hours. It's pretty rough, hopefully helpful.