In our age of total electronics and electrification, various equipment that uses amperage in its work has become not only the property of large enterprises and power grids, but also home appliances. In this regard, the question of how to read electrical circuits is of great interest to many. Understanding the basic principles of constructing circuits, electrical processes that occur in them, and standard graphic symbols, you can easily read almost any drawing of this kind.
Before reading electrical circuits, you need to have a good understanding of their structure and construction principles. And then even the most complex and intricate scheme will no longer seem just a meaningless set of “Kabbalistic symbols” and ornate patterns. And the question of how to read electrical circuits will go into the category of solved ones.
All graphic symbols are characterized by a fairly simple shape. If possible, they contain the most characteristic features and characteristics of each component, which greatly facilitates their memorization. Symbols do not reflect the dimensions of the element, but only its type and some technical characteristics. Having understood these tricks, you will take the first step to answering the question of how to learn how to read electrical circuits.
It is also necessary to know that all symbols without fail contain certain alphanumeric abbreviations that display some parameters of these elements of the circuit. A separate topic is a variety of lines that symbolize electrical wiring. The following line types are mainly used:
- thick solid depicts wires, cables, tires, windings, resistors, capacitors, etc .;
- a solid double thickened line indicates the cores and connections to the housing;
- dashed thick - displays a grid of various electronic devices;
- thin dashed - depicts lines of mechanical connection and shielding on electrical circuits.
Knowing the meaning of the above notation can play a key role in answering the question of how to read electrical circuits. However, the subtleties of conditional alphanumeric abbreviations, which according to the rules are written in the form of a certain sequence of letters, numbers and symbols in one line without spaces, are no less important. The positional designation often consists of three parts: the type of element, its number, and the function performed.
The letter codes of element types are groups to which certain values are assigned. They can be one or two letter. All their values are specified in detail in the technical documentation and special reference books, where all the parameters of the elements that are represented by this symbol on the diagrams are very extensively given. By the way, if you are interested in how to read electrical circuits of a car, you can be sure that for them this principle remains unchanged, since almost all documents of this kind are compiled according to a single standard.
True, not everything is so simple. There are many special schemes that are sometimes difficult to understand even for professionals. Here, just knowing the conventions is not enough. You must be well versed in all the intricacies of this device. It is not difficult to understand and remember symbols and alphanumeric abbreviations, but they can give an idea only about the device’s device, but not about its principle of operation. For this, at least a minimal theoretical base is needed.