u/caseymatalone

Hi everyone,

I built a web-based tool for structural and mechanism static force analysis. ForceCanvas. 

How it works:

• Sketch a structure or machine in your browser with parametric constraints (similar to CAD).
• Add supports, forces, moments. The app instantly solves for the reaction and member forces throughout the structure.
• Drag the mechanism through its range of motion and watch the forces update live.
• It handles both determinate and indeterminate structures.

Let me know if you find it useful.

Hi everyone,

I built a web-based tool for structural and mechanism static force analysis. ForceCanvas. I’m considering adding a free student/educator (.edu) plan, but before I spend the time building out the email verification backend, I want to get some honest feedback on if this is something you’d actually find useful for your classes or projects? Also if any educators are in here, I'd love to hear your thoughts as well.

Link to site in the comments.

How it works:

• Sketch a structure or machine in your browser with parametric constraints (similar to CAD).
• Add supports, forces, moments. The app instantly solves for the reaction and member forces throughout the structure.
• Drag the mechanism through its range of motion and watch the forces update live.
• It handles both determinate and indeterminate structures.

The app currently has a pro plan with a 15-day free trial. However, if you sign up with a school email, I will manually bump your account to give you further free access.

I have a ton of features on my roadmap, so I'd like to find out if students and educators will actually use this. Let me know what you think, or if you'd like me to walk you through it!

About 10 years ago, a company discontinued an engineering tool I used all the time. It had flaws that I hoped they’d improve, but was super useful for exploring initial designs and what not. I liked it enough that I tried building my own replacement before I even graduated college.

I quickly realized I was in way over my head. I shelved it, got a real engineering job, and moved on.

The idea of bringing it back to life and making it the way I wanted never stopped nagging at me over all these years. So a year and a half ago I decided to take another shot at it. I wasn’t sure I could actually make this on a technical level for most of the process so I didn’t put much effort, besides talking to a few friends, into making it an actual app for others. 

After lot of late nights at the kitchen counter debugging, and explaining to my wife why I was still awake at 2am working on something that made no sense to her at the time, I finally “launched” ForceCanvas.

It's a browser engineering tool that lets you sketch a structure, drag it dynamically, and instantly see how forces and reactions change throughout the design in real time.

It's intentionally simple and built for a very specific audience, which is where my current problem starts.

I was able to stay motivated while building because I had an obsession to make this to solve problems I personally have in engineering. Finding other people who think the problem is enough to try the product is turning out to be much harder. I'm sure most of you could have warned me about that if I had been here earlier!

So after spending more than a year building this, I'm trying not to waste the next year marketing it badly.

If you were in my shoes, how would you try to get this out there?

• Reddit
• Engineering communities
• LinkedIn
• Cold Email
• SEO
• Engineering YouTube creators
• University professors

Would love to hear what worked or didn't from anyone who's launched a niche technical product. Thank you!