In recent years, the topic of progressive structural collapse has received more attention around the world, and the study of element importance is the key to studying progressive collapse resistance. However, there are many elements in truss structures, making it difficult to predict their importance. The global stiffness matrix contains the specific information of the structure and singularity of the matrix can reflect the safety status of the structure, so it is useful to evaluate the key

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... ents based on the global stiffness matrix for truss structures. In this paper, according to the tangent stiffness-based method for the element importance, the square pyramid grid was chosen as an example, and the distribution rules of key elements under different support conditions, stiffness distributions, and geometric parameters were studied. Then, three common symmetric grid forms, i.e., diagonal square pyramid grids, biorthogonal lattice grids, and biorthogonal diagonal lattice grids, were selected to investigate their importance indices of elements. The principle in this work can be utilized in progressive collapse analysis and safety assessment for spatial truss structures.