Alright, I'm at the plateau on the alien world, the part where you need to build a trap to capture a creature. I have the ribcage, blue rod and I've put the hook system into place. I'm essentially all but ready for the trap, save one thing. The blue rod is needed as part of the trap setup, and I should be able to use that on the ribcage while it's setup on the ground. Problem is, it's not letting me. The guy just says: "I can't use these two things together." Am I missing something obvious? I've tried multiple times and it always says the same thing. Help? I hope I didn't run into a bug.


Edit: And of course, I find the answer right after posting... doh! Blue rod wasn't the thing I needed, it was another rod I had trouble seeing right beside the wheel assembly.

Although the Dig was an overall fantastic adventure experience when I first played it, there are a fair share of maddening puzzles or situations like the one you described that made the game crawl for me back in the day.