My club hosts the SAE heavy lift contest in Fort Worth every other year. I'm volunteering again this year. I was on the crash recovery team last time and probably will be again this year. I see some outstanding designs at that contest and also some of the most incompetent building you can imagine.
I'm going to be blunt here, just because I want to see you succeed in the long run.
If your team has been designing for a year and only now are getting around to thinking about building techniques, you've probably wasted most of that time. Design has to be done with building in mind. If your professors didn't explain that, they should really consider other employment.
But even if they didn't explain that, how could you possibly expect to create a good design from scratch without prototyping or testing anything? Surely you don't think that Solidworks wind tunnel sim is going to tell you anything?
Lastly, what kind of college junior or senior looking to graduate with an aeronautical engineering degree gets on an online forum to ask strangers to do their homework for them? Is this what you'll do if McDonnell Douglas hires you?
*rant over*
In the interest of helping you try to solve your dilemma: What's your timeline for getting a working prototype in the air? My suggestion is to look at plans for some of the classic pattern planes like the Joe Bridi Kaos. Those planes were designed to be fairly easy to build straight so they'd fly well with a minimum of fuss. Slab sided fuselages with foam wings aren't the lightest, but they are fast and will work. Also, search for an RC club in your area and make an appointment to work with a flight instructor. You'll not only build some piloting skills, but you'll also see what goes into a good flying plane.