Documentation Template/Guidelines - 2026

1. Topic: What is this documentation for? How does it work? Include a description of the design, system, or concept that is being explained. Include relevant diagrams, FBD’s and other learning resources

2. List out and explain variables. Include any values that may be useful during design and analysis. If documenting system architecture, list out system characteristics and explain why certain characteristics were designed for. Include any compromises that had to be made with other requirements or systems. Include rationale for part selection.

3. Show equations used and design workflow/procedure. What assumptions are you making? What forces are involved? What variables are you changing? What steps are you taking? Explain sim setups for validation, critical surfaces for dimensioning, go through design iterations, why did we change from one solution to another? Include example calcs or link to sheet/calculator, etc.

4. Describe the final design. What does it do well, what does it do poorly? Manufacturability? What would you do differently if starting over? Potentially also include testing plans for evaluating performance (at least for steering, suspension, and brake architecture)

This definitely isn’t exhaustive, I just included examples of things that you might want to include