Not so long ago I was playing around with Mecanno in the hope of building a pretty efficient trebuchet. Now I know from reading various books that theres quite a science to these weapons and it wasn’t until I started constructing one that I realised just how difficult these things are to build from scratch. Theres various videos on Youtube of people showing off their creations (including a couple of 10 year old kids) but for some reason I found it rather hard.
I did a bit of scouting around and found a nice piece of software which runs on both Mac and PC which basically helps you out with the maths behind the weapon and enables you to make changes and run them through a simulator. Its all very helpful stuff. The Mactreb software can be found here and although it appears to be a basic site, it is actually quite informative.
I haven’t attempted to build a new improved version just yet, I’ll save that for a rainy day.
Guild of Legendary Engineers 