Make A Scape – An adventure in engineering

Make A Scape is an apocalyptic structural engineering game for iPad. The Sketch People have wasted their resources and destroyed their environment. Use structural engineering principles to help them rebuild their world.

The game is now available from the iTunes store! Optimised for iPads. Click Here to download.

Game Features

Build in real time

• Engineer a tower, a bridge and a shelter
• Build simple structures by dragging your finger across the screen
• Your structures respond to gravity as you build thanks to Make A Scape’s real-time structural solver
• See how the forces in your structure change as you build
• Tip the screen to see how your structure will bend in the wind

Build efficiently

• Manage how much material you put into your structure
• Keep your structures as light as possible – but don’t go too light or it will come crashing down
• Recycle unwanted materials for use later

Test your structures under live loading

• Will your shelter survive a shower of giant ice blocks?
• Will your tower survive a storm?
• Will your bridge survive a strong earthquake?
• Get scored on structural strength, stiffness and efficiency of material use
• After each test go back and re-engineer your structures from where you left off

Have fun !

• Multi-touch (up to 10 fingers/touches)
• Pull on any node of your structure or throw giant ice blocks at it to check if it is strong enough or just have fun knocking it down !!

Learning Outcomes

School-aged learning

• That engineers build structures that support our way of life
• That engineers uses scientific principles
• That engineers build structures to resist physical forces  

Undergraduate learning

• Reactions, and their proportions
• Internal forces in structures
• Effect of gravity on structures
• Different types of triangulated structures
• Simple mechanisms
• Qualitative understanding of displaced shape
• Simple bracing
• Slenderness
• Stiffness of structures
• Tension and compression elements
• Live loading (wind, snow, people)
• Types of spanning structure
• Value of material conservation and reuse

Background & Credits

Make A Scape builds upon the pioneering work led by Gennaro Senatore to create online structural engineering simulators built on real-time structural solvers. The journey began with the development of the web-based app PushMePullMe. Make A Scape is the next major step on this journey – putting a real-time structural solver into the hands of learners using tablets and smartphones.

MakeAscape has been developed with the generous support of the Institution of Structural Engineers, Ove Arup Foundation and Mike Davies.