It is your mission to construct a machine that uses at least 20 individual steps to complete an assigned task, which varies from year to year. Your machine may take some time to put together. Over the years, the machines that have done best seem to be those that arrive at the contest site in sections, as opposed to pieces. The less work that has to be done to assemble your machine at the site, the better. Too often, things that work perfectly in the workshop break down during the trip to the contest site.
Most machines arrive in two or three pieces.
Steps that bridge machine sections should be easy to connect. The rest of the machine is up to you. Each team plans its machine in its own way. Maybe the best way is to use a little of both approaches. In the end, you will need a detailed description of the machine for the contest judges, and as you'll see, much of your early plans for the machine will have changed by the time you finish building it.