User Manual

A sketch of the course that we will be building.

Draw straight lines with a pencil and straightedge.

Drawing arcs and circles with a handy plastic lid.

3. Building the Line-Following Course

Step 1: Plan your course.

Sketch out your course on a piece of paper. We recommend

including precise dimensions so that you can make multiple

copies of the course, publish the plan on your website, etc.

You should take into account the dimensions of the

posterboard sheets that you will use to build the course and

the circular object that you will use to trace arcs.

The picture at right shows a plan for a line course on two

22"×28" posterboard sheets. Leaving borders of 4" and 5" on

the long and short sides brings the usable area to 36"×18",

which we divided into a grid with a 3" spacing. You can see

faint marks around the edge of the sketch indicating the

spacing of the grid. The 3" spacing nicely matches the 6"-

diameter plastic lid that we will use to draw circles.

Step 2: Pencil the course onto the posterboard sheets.

The next step is to transfer your sketch onto the

posterboard. We started by carefully marking our 3" grid

around the edge of the sheets with a ruler and a pencil,

then measuring inward to mark key points on the path.

Since all of our straight segments are multiples of 3"

long, and the arcs are 90°, 180°, or 270°, the beginning

and end of every straight segment and arc is on a grid

point. Centers of circles used to make arcs also fall on

grid points.

Lightly pencil in the complete path of your course. Draw

straight segments of the path against the ruler, and use

your circular object to draw accurate circular arcs.

Step 3: Stretch the electrical tape along the pencil line of the first sheet of posterboard.

This is the step where it is important to be as neat as possible, so that your final course will look beautiful. The key

is to always keep the electrical tape stretched out tightly in a direction tangent to the path, so that when you press it

down onto the posterboard, it will make a consistent, clean, line.

3. Building the Line-Following Course Page 4 of 10