Hints & Tips

Breaking Strut

There will be many occassions when building your bridges that you will need to reinforce a single strut that is breaking. Don't just add more struts around the breaking strut in an attempt to reinforce it as these additions are unlikely to relieve the stress from the strut you are trying to reinforce. What you need to do is delete the breaking strut and impliment a diamond brace in the middle as this will perfectly split the stress that the original strut was receiving between two sets of struts. Using this method will also allow you to make this diamond shape longer than the original strut. Leaving the original strut as well as creating a diamond brace will not help you as the stress will primary be sent along the original strut instead of the diamond brace.

Breaking Diamond Brace

When this happens it is because you have a mis-balanced diamond brace. A mis-balanced diamond brace means both of the diamond's edges are not an equal distance away from the imaginary line that the original strut formed. It is important for a diamond brace to work that the edges are equal distance so the stress splits evenly between the two sides.

Attaching Additional Material to Diamond Braces

Avoid adding any additional material to a diamond brace as this will likely cause stress to be diverted away from the diamond brace. Doing this can also disrupt the balance of the bridge as it will not be split equally.