Congratulations to all the winners of our second round of challenge with CyDesign. Both David and GrabCAD really appreciate the hard work everyone put into their submissions. We also want to clear up a few irregularities regarding the prizes.
First off, the winners. Congrats to Marek Rybacki and his submission for winning first prize in the heavily contested Group B Rally Car Challenge. The rest of the winners can be found here.
There were half as many submissions for the Passenger Car Component Challenge, and unfortunately there were not as many submissions there either. But what, it's not like nobody won! Give a hand to first prize winners Passenger Car Components/ SET_1 by Tomas and CyDesign Car Component Challenge, Set 3 by Rob Podell. The rest of the results can be found here.
The Challenge for Us
In this challenge there was a lot of controversy over what the rules were. The comments pages got pretty intense, more intense than usual. Design challenges are very competitive environments, and if no one feels like their entry is being treated as fairly as the next, then the onus is on us. I'd like to talk about how we're trying to improve this process.
First, a little background to how a Design Challenge is made. The rules and the description are usually given to us by the client. Often these sorts of clients are new to GrabCAD but want to get ideas or models via Crowdsourcing. More often than not, English is their second-language, leading to occasional misunderstandings. Furthermore, we have to balance the client's desire for protecting their own trade secrets. Respecting their wishes and your wishes has been our biggest challenge, which we feel is partly resolved with our new set of 5 types of Design Challenges.
We've grown very quickly and we're trying to re-jig our Design Challenge creation process and management system to make sure that everyone is happy along the way. We often involve the client in the challenge so that there is no second-guessing by GrabCAD about what the client wants. But hey, where is your voice in the whole matter?
Today Sara posted a question "How Can We Improve Challenges?" Please go there and add your voice to the conversation. Creating and managing Design Challenges are an involved process. We love doing them and so do you. I think it brings out the best Engineers and Designers out of everyone. And so it sucks to see a few of you dissatisfied with how they've been run.
We've also updated our Community Framework as well which goes over all of the dos and don't and general rules when on GrabCAD. You can take a look at them here.
We try our best to make Engineers and Designers come first. Thanks for your understanding.
