Our candy selling fundraiser has been ongoing this week. Look for Team members to be selling candy where ever you see them. We are excited about everyone's progress. We need to build our coffers for parts purchases and competition entry fees.
We also received sponsorship for a 501(c)3 as a not-for-profit. Donations to our Team can be considered a tax deduction for businesses and individuals. We can provide receipts for direct contributions, sponsorship's and Paypal donations.
Setting up CREO and ROBOTC is our next priority along with brainstorming designs. RobotC licenses were donated to the Team by Hektoen Research today. They also included the Virtual World license with their generous gift. Virtual World will enable us to program the robots and test the program without the NXT. Everyone on the team has the opportunity to program whenever they have time, which is a huge benefit.
Bruce had brought in a thumbdrive with CREO 2.0 on it since we had trouble downloading the file. The end file is 4.3Gb. At our connection speed, that takes about 12 hours to download. Apparently that size file will not fit on a FAT32 file system. Bruce's thumbdrive came with exFAT on it. I had to look that one up, since I never heard of exFAT. Wiki explains that it is a proprietary and highly license file system developed by Microsoft. Due to the numerous patents, 3rd party implementations are non-existent.
CREO installations will be has been happening this week as the file makes its way through the Team. With some installations running, we are anxious to start drawing assemblies. CREO has a library of Tetrix parts available which can be used to draw up a robot without having to draw the individual parts. CREO tracks the parts used and produces a Bill of Materials at the end, which is a big help since a BOM is required at the competitions. The library is found under the 3D Mode Space Tab of the browser that opens when CREO starts. It can also be downloaded from www.ptc.com/go/firstkop
We have also been looking into the Samantha module setup and a Field Control System. Since these are new to us, we need to try to configure it before too much time passes. It will allow us to test the robot wirelessly in a competition configuration.
We also received sponsorship for a 501(c)3 as a not-for-profit. Donations to our Team can be considered a tax deduction for businesses and individuals. We can provide receipts for direct contributions, sponsorship's and Paypal donations.
Setting up CREO and ROBOTC is our next priority along with brainstorming designs. RobotC licenses were donated to the Team by Hektoen Research today. They also included the Virtual World license with their generous gift. Virtual World will enable us to program the robots and test the program without the NXT. Everyone on the team has the opportunity to program whenever they have time, which is a huge benefit.
Bruce had brought in a thumbdrive with CREO 2.0 on it since we had trouble downloading the file. The end file is 4.3Gb. At our connection speed, that takes about 12 hours to download. Apparently that size file will not fit on a FAT32 file system. Bruce's thumbdrive came with exFAT on it. I had to look that one up, since I never heard of exFAT. Wiki explains that it is a proprietary and highly license file system developed by Microsoft. Due to the numerous patents, 3rd party implementations are non-existent.
CREO installations will be has been happening this week as the file makes its way through the Team. With some installations running, we are anxious to start drawing assemblies. CREO has a library of Tetrix parts available which can be used to draw up a robot without having to draw the individual parts. CREO tracks the parts used and produces a Bill of Materials at the end, which is a big help since a BOM is required at the competitions. The library is found under the 3D Mode Space Tab of the browser that opens when CREO starts. It can also be downloaded from www.ptc.com/go/firstkop
We have also been looking into the Samantha module setup and a Field Control System. Since these are new to us, we need to try to configure it before too much time passes. It will allow us to test the robot wirelessly in a competition configuration.