practical advice to someone learning to read schematics...

[jamiewoody]

it seems like a year has really blown by!  it was only nov of '09 that i started in electronics. it has snowballed from there!

this brings me to the subject of schematics. i know the basic symbols, and what i do not know visually, is one way or another at my fingertips, in regards to symbols for op amp, etc...

could someone give me practical advice for reading schematics? when you look at one, which part should you start building first? is there a chronology to it?

i know in looking at a schematic, what series, parallel, etc is. i know what basic components are, and how they connect.  but, some schematics look so vast...like a resonance filter, which i REALLY want to build! which part of goliath do i attack first?!

thanks for your patience with my pesky questions...any help is much appreciated!

[nochtanseenspecht]

usually you start with the smallest components, like resistors, and end with the largest components.

[Circuitbenders]

If you're looking at building on stripboard theres a few bits of software that let you draw out the schematic and will then convert it to a stripboard layout for you. I think i might have posted some links on here before.

If you're trying to make a stripboard layout by hand from a schematic i usually printout a layout sheet and draw it on there first, usually starting from the left of the schematic if thats where the inputs are, and working across the board, although sometimes its easier to start with a major IC in the middle of the board and work outwards from that. Once you have a basic layout you can refine it by moving things together and taking out links etc. Remember that you can get a lot of stuff like op-amps in dual and quad packages which cuts down the complexity a lot.

A lot of schematics look really daunting but if you actually work out what components are in there its always a lot less that you first imagined

[Gordonjcp]

With a bit of practice you can break the circuit down into manageable (and recognisable) bits.  For example, the dead-bug-style Steiner filter that I've posted pics of here before went together by starting with the opamp stage - I glued the chip upside down to the copper-clad board and wired up the amp stage, and tested that before moving on to the diode ladder part.