Talk:Howe truss

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This article is confusing to laymen. It talks about Howe and Pratt trusses, but the only image showing them shows to identical X-braced bridges, one magically with verticals in tension, the other with verticals in compression, basically identical otherwise, which is not easy to understand. right next to it the text is saying "on a Howe truss the diagonals lean one way, on a Pratt they lean the other", which is baffling when every picture on the page shows bridges of square panels with X shaped diagonals inside, and a drawing appearing to show that Pratt and Howe trusses LOOK identical. It wasn't until I left Wiki and went to Google that I found simple drawings that jogged my memory of shop class, showing that a BASIC Howe or Pratt is built with only ONE diagonal per panel, not an X brace, and indeed, they lean different ways from the center. Surely such an image could be found or made for such an important page as this? The X-braced trusses are apparently DOUBLE Howe or Pratts, functionally the same as the simpler ones (I assume) but visually very confusing to a layman trying to figure out what the text is talking about.

64.223.163.252 (talk) 20:19, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]