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CAD

Design robot parts in Onshape — from your first sketch to a full assembly your team can actually build.

6 units ·17 lessonsabout 5 hr 6 min total

What you will be able to do

Model a complete FTC mechanism in Onshape with fully-defined sketches, proper mates, and drawings your build team can manufacture from.

CAD is where a robot exists before it exists. A team that designs in CAD stops guessing whether parts fit, stops re-cutting aluminium, and starts iterating in an afternoon instead of a week.

This track uses Onshape, which is free for FIRST teams, runs in a browser on any laptop or Chromebook, and has real version control — so nobody ever emails robot_v4_FINAL_final2.step again.

The units below are grouped by what you are building, not by how hard they are. Work them in order the first time through; after that, treat them as reference.

Start here

Team 26336What CAD does for an FTC team· Why we design in Onshape before anything gets cut, and what it saves us over a season.

Course guide

How this track works

Every unit pairs a short official Onshape walkthrough with an FTC problem to apply it to. Watch the video with Onshape open in a second window, rebuild what it shows, then do the lesson's exercise on a part your robot actually needs. Nothing here asks you to model a phone case or a coffee cup — the practice parts are drivetrain plates, motor mounts, and intakes.

Before you start

  • A free Onshape account on the FIRST/education plan, not the hobbyist tier
  • Any laptop or Chromebook — Onshape runs entirely in the browser
  • A mouse, ideally with a scroll wheel; trackpad CAD is possible but slow
  • No prior CAD experience — the first unit assumes nothing

The route

  1. 01Onshape from zeroSet up, sketch, and get to a part you could actually manufacture.1 lesson12 min
  2. 02Sketching that holds upConstraints, dimensions, and the planes you build on — the layer every other feature depends on.2 lessons35 min
  3. 03Modelling partsTurn sketches into solids — extrudes, holes, fillets, patterns, and several parts designed together in one place.5 lessons1 hr 25 min
  4. 04Assemblies and matesBring parts together, constrain how they move, and check the mechanism works before anyone cuts metal.3 lessons56 min
  5. 05Drawings the build team can useTurn a model into something a person at a bandsaw or a sponsor's machine shop can actually work from.3 lessons50 min
  6. 06Designing FTC mechanismsSupplier part libraries, a drivetrain that goes together, and the mechanism design habits that survive a season.3 lessons1 hr 8 min

Course contents

  1. A guided tour of Onshape· Onshape's own interface tour — documents, Part Studios, and camera control — before you model anything.Watch on YouTube