Organizing a Final Design Report

Having a fantastic design project is great, but it only goes so far unless you can effectively communicate your process, ideas, and final solution to an audience. There are many different ways you can organize all of this information, and typically you will be provided some sort of rubric. It is important to follow the rubric, but also take some time to brainstorm the best flow of the report. You want to make sure your reader can follow what they are reading, and doesn't feel confused or feel like the text is bouncing them around in a million different directions. 

The University of Minnesota, Department of Mechanical Engineering has a great document that explains a great way to organize your final design report. 

(Links below)

http://www.me.umn.edu/education/undergraduate/

http://www.me.umn.edu/education/undergraduate/writing/How-to-write-a-Design-Report.pdf

They split up the structure of the report into three main categories: Problem Definition, Design Description, and Evaluation. This allows the audience to see what problem you are trying to solve, the design process you went through, and did your design do what it was supposed to do. There are many subsections that are needed under these main sections in order to clearly explain all necessary information but I think the building blocks of organizing a report like this are really powerful. 

Now, for something like BEST Robotics, there is a clear structure you should follow based on the judges scoresheet. However, I think it would be beneficial to read through the PDF in the link above as it explains helpful content to a reader, and might help you figure out what information needs to go in what section. Remember not to wait until the last minute to begin writing ANY report. It is important to document and keep track of everything as you work. Writing a final report, is just as important as doing the entire project itself. 

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Project Update

Here are some pictures and videos of the latest progress we have made on our project!

Here is a video of the most recent test flight with our small scale prototype, and 8 motors:

Here is an image of the small scale prototype with 8 Rotors (minus the pusher prop):

Here is are a few images of the large scale prototype (minus any motors, props, electronics):

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 Software

In today's society, with advancements in technology, computers have become a focal point of daily life. This is especially true when it comes to the world of engineering. Most calculations and analysis done in today's engineering fields are almost all done in various forms of software that streamline what you are capable of doing. With this being said, what software you choose to work with becomes a vital factor in your engineering process. 

For our project, the most important needs we had to address was the ability to design, analyze, and code using software. To meet these needs we used a variety of software so that we could complete the tasks involved in creating our final project. 

Starting with needing the ability to design, we chose to use CATIA V5. CATIA V5 is an autocad software that allows the user to create 3d models efficiently and accurately. It also allows  for the assembly of models easily to visualize a finished product. In our case, we used Catia to create a model of our final design "vision", the assembly for our large scale prototype, as well as an innovative design for a motor mount. 

Next, for our analysis needs, the bulk of our stress analysis was done using ANSYS. ANSYS is a software used for various purposed like simulation, elemental and structural analysis, and mathematical computations. We used it to run stress analysis on the frame of our large scale prototype, and many parts that went into the frame, allowing us to see flaws and redesign where needed. 

We used several coding languages throughout the project, as many have different areas they are very useful in and not so useful in others. Matlab was used to help with calculations and analysis as it has some very useful toolboxes for computations. It allowed us to put rigorous equations into it and perform many iterations very quickly as you can change a few variables in the initial code and have a new result almost instantly. Python was used for many various things for our project, as it is a free software with great toolboxes. It has a wide variety of uses and advantages that can be taken control of with a little effort to learn it. Two other coding languages that were used as well and are actually the structure of our code for our prototypes are C++ and Fortran. We decided to use C++ as it is one of the fastest coding languages that can be used with software. This was an important aspect with our project as drones can easily become unstable in a very short length of time, so having a language that can run through our control system fast enough to keep up with small changes every second really swayed us toward it. Fortran was used in combination with C++ because it is very useful with mathematical derivations and various linear algebraic methods with matrices.

So to wrap up, software is a very important aspect when creating and designing. More importantly however, is the software you choose to use. Tying back into research and how important it is to the design process, knowing what kind of challenges and things you will need to do for your project will help greatly when choosing software that fits with what you are aiming to do. In our case, we knew what we needed to accomplish, and were already familiar with software that did it very well so that influenced our choices. 

Don't forget to stay updated on our Twitter, and look for another blog post next week!