Week 4: KNEX vs WPBD

Last week we focused our efforts on working with West Point Bridge Designer to experiment with different designs and properties of bridges, prior to lab this week it was essential to have begun thinking about designs for our prototype bridges. This coming week we have agreed to draw our designs for bridge and to start thinking about what designs or design components we should implement into our team bridge in the coming weeks. This week we had not real major accomplishments, due to the fact that our time spent in the lab was spent testing our ideas with knex to enhance our understanding when we design our bridges. The group nor myself see any problems on the horizon.

The similarities between West Point Bridge Designer and Knex are that each piece has a price associated with it and each piece has a load that it can carry. Designs created in West Point Bridge Designer can theoretically be transferred and built using Knex, with only minor changes conforming to

The difference between the two systems is that in West Point Bridge Designer, the beams can be attached to the gusset plates at any angle whereas with KNEX we are limited to attaching beams to the gusset plates at 45 degree increments. Furthermore with Knex we only have one type of material that we have to choose from whereas in West Point Bridge Designer the material can be changed and with this the properties of the materials change. Another advantage to KNEX is the fact that they are something that we can hold and assemble allowing us the opportunity go get real life design experience, it is one thing to see a drawing of a bridge and manipulate it and it is a totally different thing to assemble a bridge and analyze the failure. In addition with KNEX the bridge is exposed to more environmental factors that have an impact on design than West Point Bridge Designer is capable of showing.