Table of Contents

Conventions

<aside> ‼️

Callouts with a purple background and ‼️will be used for information that isn’t central, but still important to know.

</aside>

<aside> 📌

Callouts with a yellow background and 📌 are used for central concepts for a section.

</aside>

<aside> 🛠️

Callouts with a red background and a hammer and wrench are used for dev notes for future maintainers of this document

</aside>

Foreword

Some of you may be wondering, do we really need a full wiki page—potentially even a full novel by the time you read this—for CAD conventions? Short answer, yes absolutely! Long answer is that CAD conventions are absolutely necessary to maintain efficient processes throughout the season. "How you do anything is how you do everything” is the mantra that should stick with you throughout the ENTIRE CAD process, every spaghetti CAD started with “it’s just one unnamed sketch, how bad could it hurt”.

<aside> 📌 You are ‼️NOT THE ONLY PERSON ‼️ who works on a CAD document, CAD you produce needs to be readable and usable by other members of the team. If your CAD is not usable or readable by a majority of the design subteam, its not good and needs to be changed.

</aside>

<aside> ‼️

Every new (and old) design member should read this guide at least once. This guide should also be used as reference before, after and throughout the design process. Especially consult this guide when doing design reviews.

</aside>

<aside> 🛠️

This guide is a living document which can (and should) be updated as FRC CAD moves forward. Just a forewarning to not make this page into a wiki war, it should ideally be maintained by senior design members/mentors/or whoever is senior design authority at the time.

</aside>

<aside> 🛠️

CAD Examples for the wiki would be super cool, we should add those.

</aside>

The CAD “Commandments”

<aside> 📌 This is basic CAD etiquette. Clean CAD is maintainable, iterable, and allows for collaboration. Otherwise, you will be the only person that will bother to understand your CAD.

</aside>

  1. When CADing something in a part studio, CAD it where it will actually go.
    1. Do not just put it in the middle of somewhere random because “you will put it in place in the assembly.” Make it around where it will actually sit, so when you are working with the geometry of it in the sketch, you have a frame of reference of where it actually goes, instead of winging it in the middle of nowhere.
    2. Use the origin cube and a base part to create your reference frame instead of fixing it.
  2. You don’t need two parts that are identical to each other. Just CAD it once, that’s what assemblies are for.
    1. As of 9.19.2025 you no longer need to make mirrored parts either, use Assembly Mirror instead.
  3. Use folders in part studios.