A Truss Analyzer For Enriching The Learning Experience Of Students

This paper is written to contribute a software, named WinTruss, with illustration, for analyzing trusses. The software is a resulting product of a design project by a senior student in a sequence of two courses in Creative Project Design for mechanical engineering students at the University of Arkansas. WinTruss runs on PC Windows 95 and later. Being easy-to-use, intuitive, flexible, and powerful, this software is in the process of being made available to instructors and students at Arkansas for enriching the learning experience of students in courses that involve the analysis and design of trusses. The built-in “User Name and ID” dialog box, to be filled out by the user just before submitting the input truss for computer solution, and the “time stamp” on the hard copy of the solution are special pedagogical features. These features allow an instructor to better monitor the actual computer usage by individual students as assignments in a course.