I understand everybody's point of view. But at the same time, I have done the inventor award submission for team 108 this past season. The ones that have the responsibility to turn in the submission on time has a lot of stress to work with as well as the animators do for their submission. I remember those nights that I went through without sleep to get this submission in on time (many of my friends would confirm that). Yes, it would be nice to have each regional have an inventor winner. Yes, it would be way better if we get every team to submit a drawings. I am sure that every team goes through a design process, they go to the drawing board even before they start building the robot, and every team doesnt use the same software or not used to it. I had to go through learning inventor in order to submit the submission. Just like someone pointed out before me, maybe FIRST can open this up to all teams as a "Design Award" where teams are allowed to submit drawings (CAD, Inventor, Pro E, Solidworks).
... What is engineering? Engineering comes into play when you are there to solve the problem. An Engineer goes to the drawing board first and then onto manufacturing the product. The high school students have had the encouragement from the mentors and engineers to go straight to the manufacturing parts of the robot while a lot of students didn't go through the drawing process of engineering. A student like myself had the chance to go through design work and then onto manufacturing. Submitting a submission by a student can also help them learn how to use these industrial softwares which inspires them to get into engineering. FIRST is about us and learning. Lets imagine, innovate and create...
