Using Notion for an Engineering Notebook

What Is Notion

For Vex Robotics teams, Notion is one option for teams to manage tasks amongst members, and to create an Engineering Notebook. It has lots of additional features for advanced users but can be very difficult for beginners.

It has been contested how virtual notebooks will be scored for the 5 points associated with Notebook Formatting. Teams must make an effort to show that the notebook was created chronologically and in the order of the engineering design process alongside a table of contents and page numbers

Example Notebook using Templates

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Templates.pdf

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Compiled Templates

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Complete.pdf

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Complete Example Notebook Using Templates

Key Notion Components

Pages

Pages are the main area for content in Notion and is where notebook entries will take place. Think of Pages as a word document. Pages contain Headers (3 levels), Text, Lists, and more. In Notion, the Pages don't have traditional page dividers that you would find in Microsoft Word or Google Sheets, but instead each Page is continuous until exported.

One key aspect of each Page is the heading. This includes a Title, an optional Icon, and Properties. These can all be preset in templates, but can also be changed for each individual entry. Properties are very important as they help to organize pages in Databases with data such as tags, numerical values, and more. Properties can store any needed data about the Page, and for notebooking is best utilized to add a date, category for the entry, and organize entries for exporting with statuses.

Databases

Databases act similar to CSV files and tables, but can store more than data, and are very helpful to organize Pages, and for Vex, notebook entries. Databases can be used to organize Pages, with the ability to sort based on Properties, and create multiple Views with Filters to only show certain Pages. Within Databases, Pages can be created as well, and with specified Templates that can be used for different styles of notebook entries.