My boyhood Meccano [think something like Erector] was always being used when I was a kid - even into my early teenage years.
Got put away, but thankfully not given away !
As a farmer with a welder, and the inclination [and ability] to make some of my own gear, the old Mecanno got brought out.
It was used to figure lift angles for hydraulics on things like folding cultivators, and also the tipping trays on two separate truck bodies.
I can remember the frustration over one 'scissor lift' arrangement! The geometry of my idea meant that in using a hydraulic ram to fold [through about 110 deg], the first 30 deg of fold only needed about 5% of the ram's stroke, and the closer the fold got to 100deg the more stroke was needed.  That geometry needed some lateral thinking to overcome!
End result was not exactly pretty, but it worked . A separate ram did the initial lift via a chain, which then was redundant for the remainder of the lift/fold.