Week 4 Update

This week, our focus was on the presentation. We wanted to ensure that the rest of our team would understand what that scope of our project is. David and I took some time to come together to work on it and make sure that we were on the same page. 

For this upcoming week, I am hoping to continue the design and start drafting for the final report. We are now in the early stages of design and we want to be able to document as much as possible in order to build our report. I am also going to look into possible funding for the Guideway, since our budget seems to be the highest. We are also hoping to get some dimensions so that the other teams (bogie, wayside and solar) can have something to design around. However, we are sure that some things will not change, like the gap between tracks. Still, we are hoping to implement a third rail system on the turning portion of the track; this will only affect height of the track. 

Week 3 Update

This past week we decided to focus on designing what we could based on the dimensions given through the shared files. Within these files, we found that there were two different dimensions for the same part. This was surprising, and showed us how important universal dimensions are. We want to ensure that the bogie fits into our design, and without universal dimensions it could easily turn into a problem. Therefore, we decided to make sure that our dimensions were not constantly changing without updating other teams of said changes. 

Image 1: The cross-section with different dimensions. 

We want to make this dimension universal throughout the teams. 

We are on currently right on schedule, so that takes the pressure off of presentations quite a bit, since we seem to have a pretty clear vision of what we want to design and add. However, one of the issues we are facing is getting more files for the Futran track that were proved in the previous year. Without this dimensions found in those files, our deadlines for design will be pushed back and our gantt chart will change. We are hoping to continue on from previous years, therefore having the documents from Futran will really improve our productivity and keep us on track for the semester.  

Image 2:  Gantt chart proposed for Fall semester 2018

Furthermore, for the next week, I plan to focus on the presentation and getting that ready. I want to make sure that my team's objectives are clear and that our project can continue on to the next stages.