[Nuttyman54]

I chose student designed/mentor build also. My reasoning is similar to EricH's, but is based my team's goals and capabilities. We have very little in the way of machining capabilities, and so most of our assembly is with nuts and bolts, which (in my opinion) is not very different if a student does it or a mentor does it. One of our main goals, however, is to encourage creative solutions to engineering problems. In my experience, most of these solutions come from the brainstorming and designing end, not from the manufacturing end. I have seen the build team come up with innovative solutions to problems not addressed by the designers, though.