Hi!
I was wondering if you are allowed to create your own VEX Engineering Notebook? If so, are you allowed to do it on Canva, and then how would you submit your notebook? Is there any criteria you have to meet?
Thanks!
Thatâs a big can of worms you just opened, sir!
- You are allowed to create your own notebookâmaybe even encouraged to
- Not 100% sure if Canva is legal or not, but I never heard of anything in the Guide to Judging that makes any particular platforms illegal to use but I might be wrong there
- Please discuss where to submit the notebook with your coach. There should be a link (usually a PDF) to a digital notebook for your team on RobotEvents.comâDo remember that you might have to print your notebook at some competitions
- Please refer to the contemporary Guide to Judging and Judging Rubric for notebooks (found in the Guide to Judging) for the specific criteria of a competitive notebook
Happy note keeping!
Canva allows you to export the content you created via PDF and you arenât restricted to any program to create your notebook.
Great answer.
Iâd do a test run to make sure the pictures look good in the PDF. With a similar tool I spent days getting the pictures right, finally just exported to Word and fixed it there. That would violate the spirit of a paper notebook.
Iâve used Canva before for creating a yearbook, and the pictures were perfectly fine in the PDF.
Okay- @72837A talked about this really well, let me just unload it more in depth
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Yeah, youâre often encouraged to create a VEX engineering notebook of your own! Based off of the interactions Iâve had with judges, they usually like seeing notebooks that donât look straight off of a template. Some like it to be more creative, some like it to look professional. You do you, you can never know a judgeâs preference- But in the end the judgeâs preference SHOULD NOT matter, as long as you put in the right information into your notebook and stuff it with your daily logs, your design process, your problems, (etc, etc) it would be fine.
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Canva would be allowed, as far as I know- there are absolutely no limitations to how you create your notebook. I was once at a competition and someone sent in their notebook as a digitalized paper notebook (As in they put their notebook that they did physically and on paper and put it through a scanner or something of the type)
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In the top right corner of Canvaâs website there is a download/import button. Youâd click that and it would offer some options on your importation- I recommend something like an PDF, or a pptx. If there are any issues with images, put it through google slides or Word (something that you can upload it into) and fix it up, download it again and all should be fine)
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There is always criteria with notebooks- Drives me crazy! Let me sum up most of the notebook criteria from the judging guide for you (at the best of my ability)
EN1- Purpose (this basically means that there must be a purpose/ use for everything that is in the notebook)
EN2- The notebook must have been worked on by the students in the team. Adults are not allowed to work on the notebook (or any part of VEX robotics) BUT they are able to be looked up to about why a certain thing happened the way it worked (rely on the general VEX V5 game manual of 2025 for the adult parts)
EN3- Generally, academic honesty should make sense. But- it means that nothing should be plagiarized, âstagedâ, or just put in to only impress the judges.
EN4- No use of AI tools- Especially to how your using Canva- I know it has that big shiny button that allows you to generate images or fix up messes in your document but AVOID it- if you use it people can tell most of the time, it becomes obvious when it looks like it wasnât a âchildâ or atleast a student didnât write what was put in.
EN5- If a judge finds that the entries or anything in your notebook are dishonest, disrespectful, seem plagiarized, or look as if done by AI or an adult, it may be submitted as a code of conduct violation.
EN6- Remember, the engineering notebook needs to include the design process, thats one of the main points (define the problem, generate concepts, design solution, build and test, reflect design, and present the solution)
EN7- The engineering notebook is a requirement for MOST- not all, judging awards.
EN8- Teams MAY use any format of notebook that fits their team (so, canva would be allowed!)
EN9- Just follow the basic expectations when creating your engineering notebook
EN10- Appendices are not judged, but in the appendices put things like your code (screen shots) a CAD model, etc etc
EN11- Maintain itâs quality- Make sure it looks kind of neat, Make it atleast comprehendible- Like, donât stuff your pages, leave small spaces so it feels less suffocating.
EN12- The format of the submission of your notebook must be in the format your competion asks for (usually included in the Robotevents website)
EN13- If you write your notebook in a language that is not commonly used in the area it is required that you send in a translated copy as well
EN14- Judges judge the content, not the looks.
EN15-There are laws put on engineering notebooks to protect the ideas inside of them, this prevents judges from taking any info or photos (or sharing ideas that they saw from the notebook) to people, as the general laws on engineering notebooks still apply. (confidentiality aggreements)
EN16-Digital notebooks must be easy and able to open in a web browser
EN17- Notebooks will be submitted, stored, reviewed, and returned. (I like to call this the silly SSRR of notebooks)
EN18-Judges must ALWAYS have access to the notebook, no take back-sies during the event.
EN19- Judges donât read notebooks in random orders, they sort them and do reviews
EN20- Judges can not and should not click on links/ QR codes going out of the engineering notebook ( so try to refrain from putting links into the notebook unless its going to a new tab in the notebook)
EN21- Judges use an official checklist of qualities to find in the notebook (you can probably find it somewhere on Vex lol) and grade you off of that.
EN22- Judges should spend roughly the same time on each notebook to promote fairness and all.
EN23- Anything unusual or suspicious inside of your notebook is usually not allowed or it breaks code of conduct
no way i just wrote all of that to remember the judging guide had its own things on each thing AUGHFDJKGHDFJKG oh yeah well hope this helps 
Yes, there are no restraints to which program you use to create your notebook. The notebook templates are only a basis to your design and you donât have to use them. In order to submit your templates using Canva, you would need to either export it to a PDF or maybe even create a public view link, although the second option might be unprofessional
Well â there is more that you can do than just those two.
I bet if somebody is to share it as a link, they would share it by the âanyone with linkâ feature Canva holds and email it to the Event partners and all. But there isnât really an unprofessional way to share something â I wouldnât think that itâs that unprofessional to share a public link to somebody (because, 99% of the time, youâre not gonna actually find something that was made as a public link for canva or slides too easy â maybe going onto the 9th âoâ in Google, but nobody really searches that hard, lol).
Anyways, just sharing my thought on your perspective of unprofessionalism â but I bet that could help others when they need to know how to upload/send the CANVA to the Event partners. 
Thank you!
I do not think an emailed copy can be submitted through RobotEvents. As a coach, I have only been able to put a LINK for the notebook. In fact, the image below is directly from the Digital notebook submission page that the coach can access:
I am SUPER sorry!
That was a problem on my side! I was tryna do like 8 things at a time when making that- So let me clarify that- I meant to share the link (which would be possible in the CANVA feature of only letting people with the link see due to it being sent to them)
It would still remain as a link, I just misworded and said email instead of shared/sent with that link
Thank you for the correction!
To build on this reply, a single link means one link to the totality of the Engineering Notebook. Notebooks may be multi-volume, so what might that look like with only a single link? A Google Drive example make a Shared Folder for your Notebook, make sure it is viewable outside your organization. Get the link to the Shared Folder and put in RobotEvents. In the Google Drive folder, have each volume clearly identified with team number and volume number in sequential order:
- PushBack-Notebook-Team-44-01
- PushBack-Notebook-Team-44-02
- PushBack-Notebook-Team-44-03
- PushBack-Notebook-Team-44-04
- PushBack-Notebook-Team-44-05
Make sure at beginning of each notebook to have a note to Judges letting them know how to parse each part⌠As long as it meets all the guidelines for notebooks, you should be all set.
Reminder that external links in the notebooks are not reviewed by Judges, so make sure you are clear as to what the Judges would have seen and why it is important to reference it at that point in your design process. You may wonder why have links at all? Frankly, the notebook is meant to be a reference tool for all members of the team, so have those links add utility to your documentation.
Please donât feel like an apology is needed (or expected)! I was simply attempting to make my interpretation clear, and hoping for confirmation or clarification. We are all doing our best, I am sure. Best of luck, keep asking good questions!
I think itâs allowed. When I was competing in Foshan China I used an engineering notebook made on canva. It was definitely more work than just using the template and it made it a bit hard for the judges to understand but itâs still allowed. The template isnât required, it just helps with the design so you can focus more on the information.