Submission of Design Report & Spec Sheet

[Captain Redbeard]

There is a 2005 Design Debrief that discusses layout and font on the Formula Student website. Basically it says: "Keep the font easily legible so us old guys can read it."

-Redbeard

[jdstuff]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Matt Gignac:
Anyone know how to get a confirmation or check if your pdf got accepted? I uploaded it, and the way they have it set up, i couldnt go back later to see if it's actually there.

Matt Gignac
McGill Racing Team </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

You'll recieve an email reply in a few days. I know....not exactly comforting, but that's the way it's been done the past few years.

[PatClarke]

I cant believe you guys treat the Design Review in such a cavalier fashion!

Don't you realise that winning or placing weel in Design pivots on your DR?

This is your cars CV, it is what tells the judges what you have done and why you did it. It is the document that can make the judges anxious to see your car and discuss your design decisions with you!

Oh, and the judges might have age related myopia, [Thats my excuse ;-) ] but let me assure you they will see straight through puffery, big fonts, double spacing and all the other stuff we have seen over the years.

You should be struggling to get all you want to tell and show the judges into the allocated pages, not looking to pad it out.

Would you go to a job interview with a sloppy, puffed out CV, short on detail and content? You wouldn't get into the final selection (assuming you had even got an interview in the first place). Do I have to draw the parallels?

Grrrrrrrr.
PDR

[Storbeck]

Pat, good points. Sounds like the result of frustration from looking through a bunch of sub par design reports. However, it looks to me like people are wondering what the smallest font they can get away with, because it's hard to fit it all in.

I plan on using ten, since I think any smaller would be difficult to read, with small margins and tight spacing. Everybody might be WAY ahead of me on this one, but I just discovered the "exactly" option for line spacing in MS word. Lets you get less than single spacing, so you can get just a little bit more on each page. Found out about it while trying to fit the resume on one page.

Pat,any last minute design report tips? If nothing else a few personal pet peeves of yours to avoid?

Thanks
Andy

[CMURacing - Prometheus]

Pat-

I treat the design report like I treat all other technical reports: short and sweet. This isn't to say I resort to double spacing or big fonts or wide margins, but I set a target (usually 2000 words or so, which is 11pt with pictures inline with text), and I stay under it. Last year, I had 2100+ words. This year, I'd like to think I accomplished the same amount (or more even) with only 1700. Isn't that what good technical writing is about?

[ben]

I'm with Mike on this. I'd prefer to see concise and to the point comments rather than the start of a novel.

The biggest gripe from me last year was formatting. How hard is it to get three layout drawings and some other pics sorted?

The best are very good though, which makes that bad ones seem even worse.

Also head Pat's advice, if your design report's mediocre you stand a much better chance of being put in an initial judging group with better cars (it seems the best cars have the best reports in general) and your chance may have gone before you even speak to a design judge in person.

Ben

[GTmule]

How in the world do I submit this? I log on to that Ftp site, and I get one filename, that seems to be meaningless. Help me out,here.

[mangel83]

Copy/paste the files to that ftp folder that opens up, it's that easy

[GTmule]

cool, that's pretty lame, though, surely they could come up with something better........

[KevinD]

for teams registering for both east and west, both east and west FTP sites are linked to the same. because we have a different number for both events, should i be submitting two documents, one for each number?