Please clarify European resistor value notation for me

I have seen that used a lot by clients over there. However, there was also an instance where a US company used 1K2 but not 500R. I believe there is some kind of former DIN standard about it, now probably migrated into an EN document. This also specifies symbol shapes.

I don't find it a problem. In the US it's more complicated. Some companies insist that you do not write 4.7nF but use 4700pF. Others want that noted as 0.0047uF. Yet others want .0047uF.

Now if you look at languages that's a whole other game. A choke is a smoorspoel in NL, a Drossel in Germany and so on. Non-native speakers get thrown an extra curve by the fact that Drossel is also a song bird over there.

Yes But your do not need to write 1K0 or 15M0, just 1K or 15M is ok.

Maybe the reason for this notation is because it is easy to overlook a . on a dirty schematic drawing.

"Periods" have a way of fading away from paper drawings :-(

Apparently OrCAD Capture has added this feature.

...Jim Thompson

Not so much anymore but it sure was a problem with the old plotters. Especially when the pens had been in there a while.

That's why it is important that a CAD system can be set to fixed width font. Mine can do both. With fixed at least you can see that something must be missing.

Just imagine a missing dot on a 2.2ohm inrush limiter and someone puts a

On a sunny day (5 Dec 2006 11:01:27 -0800) it happened "Mike Noone" wrote in :

Yes.

It is simpler in Europe. Americans still specify small caps in uF, and then say .001 uF, we say 1nF.

And why, in English 'speaker'. Because it emits (audible) music and speech. Better it be called an elecro-audi-emitter or something?

And when it comes to it, why 'tube'. The ide of a valve regulating/controlling the flow of something is pretty good analogy. Some tubes are even tubular! They are globular (and more valuable as a result) or even metal?

But it doesn't matter at all as long we all understand what we are talking about.

Antenna/Aerial Capacitor/Condenser Tube/Valve Inductor/Choke/Coil Filtering/Smoothing .......................................................................... and ad infinitum .................

Have fun.

The way I work a missing dot would get caught at LVS (layout versus schematic), the netlists wouldn't match.

...Jim Thompson

That would mean it's simpler since we only have uF. Everthing is bigger here 8-D)))

We say 1 nF, and we also say 2.7 nF, which is proper scientific notation. 2n7 is not.

John

Well, yes, same here. But that doesn't help the poor guy who reads a faded schematic and thinks, wow, I've got that 22ohms right here.

Here in the USA, we keep our schematics clean.

John

In France, reading schematics must be a real challenge, what with all the flies ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Except for the occasional coffee and beer stains.

In France we learn how to use printers.

Mike Noone a écrit :

Yup.

It's not unnecessarily complicated. It's complicated on purpose, just to confuse all the US people and apparently does quite a good job at it. It is a retaliatory measure against the US people that began this crazy game with totally insane units.

Granted, our units may be a bit impractical because almost nothing is decimal. However, we don't change them all the time like European often do. Let's see, what was the unit for pressure over there again? First it was torr, then atmospheres, then bars, now its pascals. Over here it's been PSI since before the first tires appeared. Guess what, it's still PSI :-)

Kilograms, kiloponds, newtons, drives people up the wall. Here it's pounds and that's still the same as it was when Benjamin Franklin fired up his new wood stove. Oh, and wood is still measured in cords, just like in his days.

Your interpretation above is correct. I'm quite comfortable using both systems, but frankly find the Euro one easier. The R or M or whatever is a lot more visible than a .

There's at least two schemes for everything on the planet. Even down to fundamentals about which side of the road one drives on.

You have no doubt heard about Sweden (IIRC) changing from the left to right sometime in the 1960's? Well the Irish tried it as well, but could not decide which would be the best, so they had a trial, trucks and buses on the left, cars on the right!

Extra zeros imply tolerance.

But not soap and showers ?:-)

...Jim Thompson