The most enlightening and holistic approach for an FSAE car design process. A big thank you to Geoff
Hope all current members of my team have gone through it.
@Bemo. How's your 2012 car coming along?
Regards,
Sharath
The most enlightening and holistic approach for an FSAE car design process. A big thank you to Geoff
Hope all current members of my team have gone through it.
@Bemo. How's your 2012 car coming along?
Regards,
Sharath
Ashwa Racing '07- Random guy
Ashwa Racing '08-Procurement, Workshop Management
Ashwa Racing '09- Chassis and Suspension Intern, Bodywork guy
Ashwa Racing '10- Chassis lead, Suspension, Bodywork guy
Ashwa Racing '11- Team Management
Well to answer your question Sharath: I'm not an active team member anymore, but the the team already gave two concept presentations to us alumni. Something very useful.
Major concepts are chosen and the guys are designing the 2012 car at the moment. Manufacturing usually starts immidiately at the beginning of the new year.
Rennteam Uni Stuttgart
2008: Seat and Bodywork
2009: Team captain
GreenTeam Uni Stuttgart
2010: Seat and Bodywork / Lamination whore
Formula Student Austria
2012: Operative Team
Great post Geoff.
I think a lot of teams find it tough to set goals which are clearly below the individual key performance indicators achieved by previous cars, in the interests of building the car sooner/stiffer/cheaper.
Part of the problem may be the Design Event. I get the impressions that teams think they need "Bling" and impressive numbers (10% more than last year... every year!), and that this perception might encourage people to over extend their limited resources.
It would be nice to be able discuss the resource side of the project with design judges a bit more, but from my experiences they don't seem very interested in this stuff and would rather focus on the detail of the car in front of them. A reliable and well tested and developed car often appears a bit rough next to one finished the day before and never been driven, and design judges are only human. Stating that you designed the car to be built quickly, cheaply and strong doesn't generally go down so well either, and again maybe this is exacerbating the problem.
Also as you point out, correctly gauging your resources each year and working within them is half of the problem. Obviously the level of resources available to each team is vastly different. I like to think of these resources (cash, facilities, team members, sponsors etc) as the denominator (unquantifiable though it may be), and your point score in comp as the numerator. You want to be happy with what you were able to do with what you had at your disposal that year. Each year you work to increase your resources and improve your efficiency in converting those resources into points.
I always have a huge amount of respect for small teams with very limited resources who are able to punch well above their weight. That is the sign of really good engineering and project management, for a small investment they have managed to return a huge amount of value (points).
The opposite goes for teams who clearly have a lot of funding and resources at their disposal, but consistently fail to deliver a return on that investment in terms of points scored. Its disappointing, perhaps more so considering the obviously high level of engineering talent that such teams have at their disposal.
In the case of these teams, you really have to wonder if they are in fact "trying to score as many points as possible with the resources they have available". I think in some cases they actually have very different aims and expectations of what constitutes success, or what they want to get out of Formula SAE.
Regards,
Scott Wordley
Scoring in every event for the last 12 comps running!
http://www.monashmotorsport.com/
Thanks Scott. We've had this conversation many times ourselves, (last Monday most recently!), but it is good to put it out there for all to see.
You've pre-empted my next "thesis chapter" in a way - it is being written about points per resource factor (dollar, man hour etc.). I'll still go ahead with it, but apologies if it paraphrases you a bit. Many of my written thoughts are a mash of ideas from yourself, myself, Pat and Kev Haywood, from our many meandering hours spent kicking tyres around workshops and solving the world's problems. Cheers for the inspiration.
I agree with your comments about Design, I think it is misunderstood by the vast majority. It seems that many teams are desperately trying to "out-bling" the leaders in order to prove themselves, and in doing so are working well beyond their skills and resources (as you have correctly pointed out). Whilst some will say failure is a great way to learn, I'm seeing many cases of failure harming the reputation of this competition as a whole. Not many unis are willing to wear repeated failures (in event failures, OH&S failures, student conflicts, etc) when they are broadcast wide and large as FSAE does.
I hope to address this (to some extent) through my assistance in organizing this year's event. We'll see how it all goes...
Oh, and that is a nice point about the raggedness of a well-tested car. Thanks for that.
Cheers,
Geoff
Geoff Pearson
RMIT FSAE 02-04
Monash FSAE 05
RMIT FSAE 06-07
Design it. Build it. Break it.
Great posts as always Geoff.Originally posted by Big Bird:
Thanks Scott. We've had this conversation many times ourselves, (last Monday most recently!), but it is good to put it out there for all to see.
You've pre-empted my next "thesis chapter" in a way - it is being written about points per resource factor (dollar, man hour etc.). I'll still go ahead with it, but apologies if it paraphrases you a bit. Many of my written thoughts are a mash of ideas from yourself, myself, Pat and Kev Haywood, from our many meandering hours spent kicking tyres around workshops and solving the world's problems. Cheers for the inspiration.
I agree with your comments about Design, I think it is misunderstood by the vast majority. It seems that many teams are desperately trying to "out-bling" the leaders in order to prove themselves, and in doing so are working well beyond their skills and resources (as you have correctly pointed out). Whilst some will say failure is a great way to learn, I'm seeing many cases of failure harming the reputation of this competition as a whole. Not many unis are willing to wear repeated failures (in event failures, OH&S failures, student conflicts, etc) when they are broadcast wide and large as FSAE does.
I hope to address this (to some extent) through my assistance in organizing this year's event. We'll see how it all goes...
Oh, and that is a nice point about the raggedness of a well-tested car. Thanks for that.
Cheers,
Geoff
On the subject of bling in the design event - I'm almost more concerned that certain judges (I genuinely don't have any specific names in mind so don't try and guess) want to see "innovation" and fancy materials, technologies, etc. I judged at FS this year for the first time in a while (didn't have a race that weekend for a change) and felt that there's a big variation amongst the judges as to what they feel the design goals are or should be.
The biggest problem here is that everyone from design judges to teams basically doesn't care about the hypothetical weekend autocrosser. It's a parochial requirement for Formula SAE, but I don't think it works for the UK, Germany, etc where there's no Solo II culture. I think we maybe need to look at redefining the problem as it's worded in the regs. I don't mean changing the tech regs just setting the scene slightly differently to steer the teams where we think they should go.
Ben
-
Thanks Ben,
I sometimes think that the phrase about "weekend autocross racer" should be dropped completely. It is an intangible that helps little and leads to lots of hand-wavy arguments about what an autocross car should be. With due respect, if this comp was about autocross vehicle design it would have never taken off anywhere outside the US.
This is an engineering competition, and we should simply be prescribing engineering criteria. We already do this - style and dimensions of tracks, engine capacity and restriction, vehicle minimum or maximum dimensions, cost limits, economy criteria, etc. It should then be up to the team to specify their design strategy, and be judged according to consistency with that strategy and quality of work.
So if Team A is out to build the lightest-stiffest-fastest car with cost no concern, then they say so and are judged with that as the main priority. If the team sets a cost per point target, then they are judged by that criteria. If a team sets out a rational argument that in their case a carbureted car was going to score them more points than an EFI car given their resources and priorities, then they should be judged on the quality of the argument and consistency of implementation, rather than whether the judge likes carbs or not.
Finding judges who are happy to judge this way might be a problem. I think FSAE alumni might be a better starting point than rusted-on industry types.
There are a number of unis voicing their concerns about cost of participation in FSAE, and questioning their ongoing involvement. Such unis are usually pointing towards the carbon wondercars etc. and crying "we can't compete". Certainly my goal when competing was to show that, in fact, you could compete with a cheap and simple car if built well enough. I am proud that we competed as well as we did, although the lesson seems to have been lost.
So my two key points:
* We need judges who can judge flexibly in accordance with the team's stated objectives - which means education of judges.
* We need to educate the teams that it is OK to formulate their own strategy and it doesn't have to be "lightest fastest blingest"
We'll see how we go and how we might achieve this...
Geoff Pearson
RMIT FSAE 02-04
Monash FSAE 05
RMIT FSAE 06-07
Design it. Build it. Break it.
Geoff,We need judges who can judge flexibly in accordance with the team's stated objectives - which means education of judges.
Each year in Germany we run a Design Judges training seminar. I believe this leads to a better understanding of what the competition is all about and judges who are less blinded by the bling!
In 2009, Steve Fox and I thought the judging was probably mature enough to not need the seminar, but we were wrong! That was the messiest year of judging at FSG and so in 2010 and 2011 we reintroduced the training seminar with positive results.
Steve has tried to implement the same type of briefing in Michigan, but that competition has its own conventions ;-)
What we have to keep reinforcing to the judges is to ask 'WHY'? We can all see what has been done, but the task for the team is to defend their design decisions. There are 1000 valid ways to do that and 10,000 ways to stuff it up!
Having said that, the teams 'stated objectives' should not be the sole judging criteria. We must remember what task has been set for the team, to build a prototype for production! So a huge judging criterium must be 'Fitness for purpose'! Remember.., well at least in my case.., we are trying to provide a bloody good finishing school for young engineers. That is a broad task and one easy to lose sight of!
Keep up the good work mate
Pat
The trick is ... There is no trick!
Yeah, I got a bit lost in my own argument there Pat. I wouldn't propose that teams just dream up any old objectives and the judges have to accept them. Rather, given my whole hobby-horse at the moment is points per resource, I think it would be good if the students might have some flexibility in in nominating how they are approaching that aim. Fitness for purpose is a necessary part of that decision.We need judges who can judge flexibly in accordance with the team's stated objectives - which means education of judges.
For example, if a team decided through an appropriate analysis that a carbureted spaceframe car with a spool would give them maximum points return for their resources, then their design score be based on the quality of that decision, and how well their car was integrated and presented as carbureted spaceframe car with a spool.
Pat, I know you already do this so it is probably an unnecessary point to make. But maybe our stating of it might help the teams understand the point.
Cheers,
Geoff Pearson
RMIT FSAE 02-04
Monash FSAE 05
RMIT FSAE 06-07
Design it. Build it. Break it.
Hey thanks for the sticky, ladies/gents. It's an honour.
Cheers,
Geoff
Geoff Pearson
RMIT FSAE 02-04
Monash FSAE 05
RMIT FSAE 06-07
Design it. Build it. Break it.
Now can we get the rest of your threads made sticky too? I particularly like the "Engines and Other Semi-Necessary Lumps of Junk" thread.