Hello everyone,

I am pleased to announce F4 will be hosting a CADathon from July 29th 12pm EST - July 31st 7pm EST.

First we should explain what a CADathon is. Essentially, a CADathon is like a hackathon but with CAD. People/teams are given a short period of time to CAD a specific thing (in this case a robot) ending with a panel of judges selecting a winner.

As for what will go on in ours:

Participants will be split into teams of 2. Teams can be premade with people who know each other or participants can enter by themselves and be assigned a random partner. Partners will be assigned by skill level along with the prerequisite of sharing a common CAD suite. We will try to make sure partners are in the same time zone but that will be more difficult. From there, teams will be put in individual google hangouts groups where they can discuss and collaborate. The teams have 55 hours to CAD a robot from the game reveal. The game reveal will include a CAD model of the field, a short video explaining the game, and a game manual. When they are done, teams must create a high quality render of their robot and send the F4 crew their .STEP file. If teams do not submit both a render and .STEP file by the end time, they will be disqualified. Once done, the files will be inspected to make sure they adhere to the game rules. At 8pm EST on July 31st, a special F4 CADathon show will go live. First, each team will come on and explain their robots to the audience. Then, a panel of 3 special guest judges will judge each robot on 4 categories. Strategic design, model detail, buildability, and looks. The judges will then roughly figure out how many points the robot can potentially score. The winner will then be determined based on all of those factors. Each member of the winning team will receive a real prize which will be shipped to them and be themed based on the game.

The only prerequisite to join is that you are willing to spend time doing it. You also need to at least have access to some CAD software. You can be any age (This is not limited to students) and we encourage everyone from newbies to the most advanced CADers to put their skills to the test. If you are interested please sign up here.

http://goo.gl/forms/iCFmI72ZvGtZaSLo2

We will be releasing a game hint this Sunday which should confuse most of you and maybe clue one of you guys in. We hope to see everyone there as it looks like its going to be a lot of fun.

Good Luck!

Sam

We are not affiliated with KohKohPuffs CADathon from last year. However, we have permission from him and he plans on participating.