Contributing to Mechanism Examples

The mechanism examples pages are the ones that would benefit the most from outside contribution. You can add examples from other teams, of course, but adding your own mechanism and going behind the design and performance on it will be ideal. If adding an example from another team, try to interview them for their input and more accurate information.

Criteria for Mechanism Examples:

It must have been actually built and used at a competition
You must show both the good parts and the bad parts. What was it designed for? Why were certain decisions made? How easy was it to build and manufacture? How did it actually perform? What went well and what would be changed if it was redesigned?
Go into detail about specific parts of the design, such as the materials and parts used and why, any specific mechanisms or processes, etc.
Detailed pictures of the CAD and/or the actual robot. Preferably public CAD made in or uploaded to Onshape.
Extra media and links if available and applicable.

Adding Mechanism Examples

As was described in methods of contributing, there are two methods:

Writing the contribution on a separate platform (such as Google Docs) and getting an internal contributor to add it to the website
Forking and making a pull request on GitHub

The first method is pretty self explanatory, but if you choose to fork and make a pull request on GitHub, there is some formatting required. Make sure to follow the contribution guide on the methods of contributing page to get up and running with GitHub and VS Code.

Adding a Mechanism Category (OPTIONAL)

If you need to add a mechanism category, you must add a landing page for the mechanism examples in that category.

Adding the Folders and Files

Create a new folder under mechanism-examples with the name of the new mechanism category. All mechanism example pages and the landing page for the category will be in this folder.

Note

If there are multiple types of the mechanism (such as with elevators and intakes), you can create multiple folders in that with the landing pages in each separate folder. For example, the folder elevator contains the folders cascade and continuous, both of which contain a landing page index.mdx.

Create the landing page(s) for the category, named index.mdx. Only one of these can be made per folder.
Copy this template for the category landing page and fill it out with your information:

---
title: page-title
description: Description of the mechanism category
---

# page-title

Description of the mechanism category and what examples are included.

Adding a Mechanism Example Page

Adding a mechanism example page to an already existing category requires a few things to be done. The page has to be created and a standard image for the example needs to be created.

Creating the Page

Create a new .mdx file in the category folder for your example.

Fill out the page with your information using Markdown and MDX formatting, including:

Frontmatter with title and description
Main image of the mechanism
Links to CAD documents
Behind the Design section

Example template:

---
title: mechanism-example-name
description: Brief description of the mechanism
---

# mechanism-example-name

:::figure{w=80}
![alt-text](/mechanism-examples/category/image.webp)
Caption describing the mechanism
:::

### Links
[CAD Link](https://cad.onshape.com/...)

## Behind the Design

Content about the design decisions, performance, and lessons learned.

Add any images you use for your page in /public/mechanism-examples/[category]/[example]/.

Adding an Image for the Example

Images should be in .webp format and placed in the /public/mechanism-examples/[category]/ directory.

Use a 1:1.545 or 1.545:1 aspect ratio. 1:1.545 is the aspect ratio of a picture outputted from Onshape’s “print” function using the “tabloid” paper size. You can select landscape or portrait from there for wide or tall.

Tip

For images you already have, you can use GIMP and a calculator to crop an image by adding pixels to get it to the desired aspect ratio.

Thanks for your contribution!