Stage 1 · Foundations

The goal of Stage 1 is one thing: get fluent enough with Onshape that the tool itself never slows you down. You won't design real robots here — you'll build muscle memory so that, when you start contributing to a subsystem, basic CAD operations don't get in the way.

Documents, workspaces, and versioning

A Document is the top-level container. Inside lives Part Studios (where parts are modeled), Assemblies (where they go together), and Drawings (for fabrication). Workspaces behave like git branches — make one for every session, never edit Main directly, and create a Version after each meaningful milestone.

Sketching

Every part starts with a sketch. Pick a plane, draw shapes, dimension them, and constrain them until the sketch turns black (fully defined). Use construction lines liberally; under-constrained sketches break unpredictably when you tweak a dimension later.

Part Studio features

Extrude, revolve, sweep, and loft create geometry; fillet, chamfer, hole, draft, and shell modify it. Booleans combine bodies; Patterns (linear and circular) repeat geometry cleanly. A typical FTC bracket is 5–20 features — fewer is usually better.

Mate connectors

Mate connectors are how Onshape defines "this point on this part attaches to that point on that part." Always place named mate connectors on your parts. Implicit mates work for quick assemblies but rot the moment a part changes.

Assemblies and mates

Assemblies pull in parts and define their relationships: fastened, revolute, slider, planar. Group fasteners that move together with subassemblies. A clean mate list is a maintainable assembly; a tangled one falls over the first time you swap a part.

Importing FTC part libraries

goBILDA, REV, and MISUMI publish public Onshape libraries with every motor, servo, sprocket, bearing, and structural rail you'll use. Link them into your document and drag in the COTS parts — never re-model what you can import.