This game is serious fun, and I mean that very literally. It's a great idea, it's loads of fun, the 3-star scoring adds replay value, AND it's a seriously great tool for teaching the basics of truss design. If you're embarking on the design of an epic toothpick or dried spaghetti structure, start here! This is the most fun I've had since Cat Physics, the best iPhone game ever. However, after the third level the frustration exceeded the fun. This game DESPERATELY needs snap: Snap to mid-point of rod, snap to straight, 90 (30, 60, 45) degrees, vertical, horizontal, etc.. It's very frustrating trying to slide a node along a rod, looking for the mid-point, trying to keep the rod straight, getting no feedback, and not being able to see what I'm doing because it's all happening underneath my fingertip (#iphone_needs_stylus!). It stops being about truss design and becomes a fight with the user interface. That's not fun, or educational. Also, at some zoom levels it's impossible to straighten a rod with a node in the (approximate) middle of it. Snap would fix that. If I were making a wish list I'd include continuous coordinate/angle readout as I move nodes, and some easy way to make a structure symmetrical. Word balloons when you tap a control, identifying that control, would speed up the learning curve.I really hope this app continues to be developed, because I'm eager to get back to playing it, but without the frustration.

I generally see promise in any app related to technology and engineering, and I saw it here too in a concept to bring a structural design app to the iPad. But, this one misses the mark.This app seems to try to make a truss structure game too much like Angry Birds in how it scores at the expense of basic understanding of how some of the elements work. I realize there are general explanations in the Help section, but the help should be more prominent and there once you are in the interface. It also lacks certain seemingly obvious user interface elements such as an “undo” button and a tap to take you to the next challenge once you’ve completed the current one. Finally, especially for a younger inexperienced audience, it would be helpful for each challenge level to actually state what exactly the challenge is. It took me, an experienced iPad user, and someone that has used software like this to some amateur extent, way too long to figure out how to manipulate things in the build area. For now, stick to the desktop/laptop and web versions of this type of software.

I love this app. The engineering in the belly of the machine is extraordinary, and the challenges are a lot of fun and addictive. Helps build great intuition and creativity. I'm an engineer with several years of experience and this app, in addition to being very enjoyable, is getting me to think about structures in new ways. On the downside... my girlfriend who is a humanities major, has gotten into this app and is outdoing me on the challenges! I don't how she thinks of and comes up her structures, but it's wonderful to see this that the app is also fun for someone with no technical background, and that creativity even in technical matters is not restricted to technical folks.

This app is fantastic! It not only computes the behavior of trusses but also provides great visual feedback. For example, you can visualize both the deformation of the structure and the stresses on the bars. No other app I am aware of shows stresses, which are crucial for understanding the difference between tension and compression. In this app blue means compression, and you can easily see how compressed bars buckle! The gaming aspect makes it even more interesting. Love learning while having the motivation to beat an extra level!

This app is pretty awesome. I bought it a few weeks ago and have been working my way through it. This app is great for developing a fundamental intuition about how truss structures work, how stresses are distribute through a truss, and where compression and tension occur during loading. This would be a great supplement to any beginning engineers education. The levels get increasingly more difficult. This app would be invaluable for a beginning engineer

I love how this app lets me play around with structural elements and then immediately see which members are in tension and compression. After awhile I start to get an intuitive feel for how to build an optimized structure. If I were teaching statics I would make this a required exercise. A few suggestions:Please add a multiple undo/redo feature. I find myself growing tired of repeating actions after a failed experiment. Allow me to save and recall structure diagrams. I many cases I spent quite awhile figuring out a solution and it would be nice to show someone what I came up with. It would also be useful when comparing different solutions.Make it easier to switch between deleting and adding elements. Maybe a different gesture to remove an item rather than selecting a different tool