Design robots in Onshape, SolidWorks & Fusion.
The CAD & Design department turns a team's game strategy and prototypes into a complete, manufacturable 3D model of the robot before a single part is cut. Designers use parametric CAD software (overwhelmingly Onshape in FRC, with SolidWorks, Fusion 360, and Inventor as alternatives) to model every tube, plate, gearbox, and mechanism, pulling in commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) parts from libraries like MKCad and vendor catalogs. The team produces assemblies, drawings, and a bill of materials (BOM), then runs design reviews to catch problems while they are still cheap to fix. Strong CAD work is what lets an FRC team build a robust robot quickly during the short build season.
nobody reads these in order, that is fine
modules
8
lessons
31
reading time
18hours
mastered
0per cent
reading is free, no account needed
the path
Before you open any CAD software, you need to think in three dimensions and read the language engineers use to describe parts. This primer builds the spatial-reasoning and engineering-drawing fundamentals every FRC designer needs: coordinate systems and views, orthographic projection, and how dimensions, tolerances, and units turn a sketch into a part the machine shop can actually make.
Before opening any software, you need to understand why FRC teams CAD their robots, which tool to use, and how design fits into the larger engineering design process. This module sets the foundation.
This module teaches the core Onshape skills every FRC designer needs: navigating Part Studios, sketching, creating features, building assemblies, and mating parts together. These skills transfer to any CAD package.
FRC designers rarely model COTS parts from scratch. This module covers the parts libraries and custom features that let you drop in real components and automate repetitive FRC modeling tasks.
A model is only useful if your team can actually build it. This module covers designing for the tools you own, producing drawings and a bill of materials, and running design reviews that catch problems early.
Four buildable, step-by-step CAD projects you can complete in Onshape today. Each mini-project mirrors a real FRC subsystem (a swerve drivebase, a single-stage gearbox, a pivoting arm, and a lightened structural plate) and walks through layout sketches, real COTS part numbers, and the exact FeatureScripts and mate-connector moves that make the model manufacturable. Finish all four and you will have a portfolio of parametric models that look and behave like a competitive robot.
The pitfalls that quietly wreck FRC CAD models and the concrete fixes for each. Covers mate-connector and assembly failures, in-context and derived-reference breakage, sluggish regeneration in big drivebase assemblies, manufacturability mistakes that turn into scrap at the machine, and version/branching disasters in team-shared documents. Each lesson is a debugging workflow: how to recognize the symptom, find root cause, and apply a durable fix.
Deep-dive techniques used by top FRC teams: configuration-driven and FeatureScript-automated parametric design, browser-based FEA for weight-optimized structures, system-level swerve geometry and motion math, and a case study of FRC 6328's modular gusset-and-tube methodology. This module assumes you already know Onshape fundamentals and pushes toward how elite teams actually design fast and well.
Know something this department is missing?
Log in to contribute a lesson8 modules and 31 lessons, free to read without an account, written against the real Game Manual and the WPILib docs. Sign in when you want the ticks to stick and the certificate at the end.