Guidelines for how to keep CAD documentation consistent within STAR
Conventions for CAD documentation of parts designed for use by STAR can be grouped into 2 categories: drawing setup and filename conventions.
Regarding drawing setup, CADs for the purpose of documentation should use the drawing template and use Imperial (also known as IPS) units. Furthermore sub-assemblies should be placed in external files (a tutorial of how to do this is soon to come).
Regarding filename conventions, file names of CADs should adhere to the following guidelines:
File names shall follow the general convention of: Project_Subteam_DescriptiveName[_McMaster part #]. See below for project and subteam codes.
An example of this might be IREC20_PAY_Payload_Centering_Ring.SLDPRT for an in-house part or IREC20_AIR_Weld_Nut_90611A320.SLDPRT for a McMaster part.
Similarly an example for an assembly might be IREC20_AIR_Nosecone_Assembly.SLDASM
File names shall not contain special characters (e.g. "!@#$%^&*()?/|\" ) aside from "_". Hyphens shall be allowed only if part of an external part number. Spaces and periods (outside of ".SLD***") are not permitted, as they can cause filepath issues.
Subteam shall be denoted by its appropriate 3-letter abbreviation:
AIR : Airframe
AVI : Avionics
PAY : Payload
REC : Recovery
PRO : Propulsion
SIM : Simulations
OUT : Outreach
Project shall be denoted by the selected abbreviation for the project:
MINDI: 2" minimum-diameter rocket
IREC20 : 6” diameter rocket design for IREC 2020 (this is Bear Force One, the project started before it was named and before IREC 2020 was moved to 2021)
LE165 : “Hot Take”, Propulsion’s first-iteration of a liquid engine
LE1: Liquid Engine 1, Propulsion's 2020-2021 "simple" engine
LE2: Liquid Engine 2, a multi-year project to design and build a higher-performance engine. Custom tank CAD can also use LE2.
SSEP: Stage separation demonstrator
DAVE: Deployable aerial vehicle experiment, a payload launching on Bear Force One.
CAS: Common Avionics System mission(s), flown on AirBears. AirBears (the vehicle) was developed before the naming convention became mandatory, but all CAS-related CAD should follow the convention.
It's pronounced "LAH-tech" or "LAY-tech", not "LAY-tecks"; the letters in TeX are meant to represent the Greek letters tau, epsilon, and chi.
is a typesetting system, much like Microsoft Word or Adobe InDesign. It is not a text editor. is used widely in the scientific and technical publishing industry; if you've seen a document that looks like the picture below, chances are it was written in .
To give one example, if you have 5 figures labeled Fig. 1 through Fig. 5, you can insert a figure between Fig. 1 and Fig 2. and not have to worry about changing the references to Figs. 2-5 to Figs. 3-6. This can save an enormous amount of time when writing longer documents.
Welcome to the future. Simply head over to https://www.overleaf.com/ (now merged with ShareLaTeX) to get started! UC Berkeley provides free Overleaf Professional with a verified berkeley.edu email address. Overleaf has hundreds of great templates and tutorials to help you get started.
While there are hundreds of tutorials on the internet, this one is pretty good: https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Learn_LaTeX_in_30_minutes. When in doubt, just Google! Chances are someone's had the same question and made a StackOverflow post about it.
While documents come in all sorts of flavors, they generally share a similar appearance because they use the Computer Modern typeface. However, all the fonts, colors, layouts and pretty much everything is customizable--is a way of "programming documents".
While Microsoft Word is a "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) system, is decidedly not. Instead, is written as code (see below), and then compiled, usually into a PDF.
The most common reason to use is because you are writing a document with equations in it. There is simply no other way to get beautifully formatted equations (although many programs like Word now support syntax).
Even if you don't have equations, allows writers to stop worrying about annoying formatting issues, breaking their document when they add a picture, etc. and focus on the actual content. Documents like reports and books can be written in sections and seamlessly re-compiled using the articleandbookclasses, while the formatting and numbering of tables, figures, references, citations, footnotes, etc. are taken care of completely automatically.
There are two ways to use : locally on your computer or in the *cloud*.
This is really for hardcore users and people without internet. You'll first need to install a version of compatible with your operating system. Head over to https://www.latex-project.org/get/ to get started; we recommed TeX Live for Linux, MacTeX for macOS, and MiKTeX for Windows. These downloads can be pretty big!
As mentioned previously, is a typesetting system, not an editor. You can write documents in Atom, Sublime, Notepad, Notepad++, vim, Emacs, ex, TextEdit, or whatever text editor you can get your hands on. That being said, TeXnicCenter and TeXstudio are popular editors for Windows, and MacTeX includes TeXShop; you might want to use these or similar TeX-oriented editors to edit your documents unless you know what you're doing. Linux users can choose from 10s of options; for some reason people who are into Linux are also into TeX.
We have previously used to compile our reports for NASA Student Launch. If you ever need to make a checklist, design document, or report, feel free to use . Generally, Google Docs is a little easier for the uninitiated, but don't be afraid to make your documents look nice!
Follow English conventions unless told otherwise
Leave names of existing places/companies/objects as is
ex. AT&T
Use the spellings/names of objects common in the US as opposed to those common internationally
ex. Labor vs Labour
Do not put a period after units unless other conventions dictate it
in, not in. or inches
3 ft, not 3'
30 mi/hr, not mph
4 hrs, not 4 hr
Nosecone is one word; not "nose cone"
Do not abbreviate words with symbols
ex. &, @
Capitalize proper nouns, but not regular ones.
ex. Nomex and Lexan, polycarbonate, payload, ejection subsystem
Replace words like 'Payload, Ejection, Movement' with phrases like 'payload system, ejection subsystem, movement subsystem' respectively.
Convention is to not hyphenate between latin prefixes.
ex. subteam is correct vs sub-team
ex. subsystem is correct vs sub-system
A sentence that uses a listing system within it should:
have a colon before the listing begins;
have semicolons between parts, and;
use the ", and;" transition before the last item.
Use --- in LaTeX to get the long m-dash used to separate parts of sentences. -More from brunston
