Truss Me! Hack 1.91 + Redeem Codes

A really great tool for structural design. By the way, this is not a "game". I use the Truss Me tool to evaluate and compare different truss models. But I'm disappointed that I cannot save any work and, worse, if my iPhone goes to sleep, then all my work disappears.

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.

Simply adding 0-3 "gold nut" ratings as a "scoring" mechanism doesn't make something a game. Let's break this thing down:
1) No instructions. Period.
2) Any kind of GOAL for each stage. First stage? I got 3 gold nuggets! Second stage? One. WHY? Who knows! I used the minimum possible struts with the minimum possible widths. What was I supposed to do? Oh, I got it... Delete this.

I was going to use this with my second graders but there are no directions. Add them please!

Look at the moon landing, level 14. Where are the requirements? You supply no directions, no explanations of devices that are added to the structure, no required goal.......... This could be easily added as a main menu.
You were asked for this over 2 years ago.

I am an aerospace engineering student at a rigorous university in the United States. I take pride in studying hard and learning the material in traditional ways, but I would also highly encourage teachers and college professors to introduce this type of technology (of which TrussMe! is a prime example) into their teaching methodology. As many of you well know, the first few years of undergraduate education are meant to solidify the fundamentals and develop the students' intuition to solve more complex problems in their upper level courses and professional careers. Often, for the majority of students, structural labs are the first exposure to experimental, constraint-driven, design-minded challenges. This app is an excellent way to anticipate and smooth out that transition from textbook problems to the machine shop, as well as an inexpensive solution to their early sketches, analysis validation, and virtual prototypes.

On a side note, I got this app for my dad for Christmas too. He's never had an opportunity to attend college like me, but he's the tinkerer-type... He absolutely loved TrussMe! And man, what an intuition he already has!

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.

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.

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