Hi Guys! This is Nick Lin from team 453X. I had led team 66799B in my previous Middle School team of American School in Taichung two years ago during the 2018-2019 Turning Point season. After that, I also led team 73335T from Dr. Player Robotics Lab during the 2019-2020 Tower Takeover season. I had led and written the engineering notebook for both team 66799B and 73335T, and were fortunate enough to win the design award in the TIRT VEX robotics competiton on 2018.

As I am constructing the notebook for 453X in the Change Up Season this year, I thought that I should give you some of my tips on writing a engineering notebook. Below will be my tips on writting a good engineering notebook for your VRC competitions. Enjoy!

A good Engineering Notebook Must include:

• Table of Contents
• Lots of drawings
• A Gantt chart
• The Team and the member roles (suggested to get creative about the member role names, so invent roles if you have to. “Battery boy” was one role mentioned by a Worlds Excellence Award winner.)
• The Challenge. Describe the challenge at the beginning of the notebook with words and pictures and states the team’s goals toward accomplishing that challenge.
• Brainstorming. Generates an extensive list of possible approaches to the challenge with labeled diagrams.
• Select Approach. Explains why the selected approach was chosen, and why the other alternatives were not chosen.
• Daily Entries (for both build & designing and programming). Needed to include the following:
  • Today’s date
  • Meeting Attendances
  • Goals for the day’s meeting
  • What the team have done in that meeting with drawn pictures if possible
• Test & Redesign. Describes in great detail the process of troubleshooting, testing, and redesigning through all iterations (cycles) of the process.

Maybe include:

• Tournament breakdowns
• Hours worked on everyday
• Game Overview (in words)
• Problem Statement (problems of how to score)
• Design Statement
  (ex. Design, build, and compete with a robot that can efficiently score all VEX game components in VEX’s 2018/2019 game, Turning Point)
• Constraints

  Examples:

  • Robot must be 18x18x18
  • VEX Materials only
  • Must be able to score by ______ (when)
  • Strategies (Defensive and Offensive)

Other Things to Consider:

• bound quad-ruled notebook is the preferred format
• team # on the cover
• written in ink with errors crossed out using a single line; NEVER remove a page
• pages numbered, dated, and signed/initialed by student
• a table of contents
• team meeting notes as they relate to the design process
• design concepts and sketches
• Pictures
• notes from competitions regarding observations that should be considered in the next iteration of their design
• team members’ observations and thoughts on their design
• team organization practices as they relate to their design process
• any other documentation that a team finds useful as related to their robots design
• notes on the robot’s computer code how the code is designed to interact with the robot’s mechanical systems to create an overall integrated system
• placement of sensors for software feedback systems and algorithms used for the control of the robot should be clearly documented
• computer code or CAD drawings should be glued or taped into the notebook

Great additional resources:

• https://renegaderobotics.org/all-about-vex-judged-awards
• https://www.roboticseducation.org/documents/2017/07/team-design-notebooks-and-team-journals.pdf
• https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfKWW3x6_dPH5QFTZ1o8-gwKN_E8zVPMV

• https://www.roboticseducation.org/documents/2016/11/vrc-engineering-notebook-team-1575a.pdf