PASS, No amber subscription

Mechanical & Electrical Plan Vignette and Multiple Choice

PASS, No amber subscription

Postby yup1961 » Thu Oct 26, 2017 9:35 am

Found out I passed Building Systems this morning after taking it last Tuesday. I thought I failed after I left the exam because there were so many minute detail oriented questions that I had no clue about. For those of you trying to finish up 4.0 this is what I did:

BALLAST AND KAPLAN: I alternated reading Ballast and Kaplan over and over. No notes, just very mindful reading. There was a lot of stuff I saw for the first time while studying, so I basically had my phone in hand the whole time and googled everything that I didn't understand (which was actually most of it). Youtube is was essential. You really have to go back to high school science and chemistry to really understand what's going on, and I found understanding the reasons why something is the way it is helps better than memorizing. The study guides were good guides, I just needed to look a lot of things up.

AMBER SERIES: Nope. I'm not spending $400 on videos. I don't know about you guys but I'd rather spend $400 taking the exams twice without studying just to get a preview of the questions than $400 to be spoon-fed.

AMBER BOOK: I bought the book (really just a 60 question quiz with really good explanations) and that I thought helped me understand things better. Would recommend.

MEEB: Nope. Too big. I read one chapter which took half a day, had too much content, and was too detailed. There was a lot of stuff on my test I didn't know that I assumed was inside that book. If I failed, I would have combed through it because the study guides are basically this book in a summarized form. But I didn't so meh.

CALCS: I didn't study too many calculations except for U value stuff. I learned most of them just through reading without focusing on them since they're all usually some variant of A=B*C Acoustics was too confusing. Not wasting time re-memorizing the rules of logarithms so I can answer one or two questions that I'd probably get wrong anyway.

VIGNETTE: Vignette was straight forward. I had rounded all the inches to 0.5 feet which worked for the practice exam but I realized made the difference between needing 2 ducts or 3 ducts on my actual exam. Caught it at the last minute.
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Re: PASS, No amber subscription

Postby spike » Thu Oct 26, 2017 1:12 pm

Congratulations! great news!
I am taking way too long to do the Vignette and any tips/ tricks to solve ....any insight to how you went about getting the vignette done is most appreciated.
the lighting is really giving me a hard time. I test in a weeks time.

Any help advice is appreciated.

Thanks

Spike
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Re: PASS, No amber subscription

Postby Coach » Fri Oct 27, 2017 1:05 pm

spike wrote:I am taking way too long to do the Vignette and any tips/ tricks to solve ....any insight to how you went about getting the vignette done is most appreciated.
the lighting is really giving me a hard time. I test in a weeks time.

1) Determine proper light spacing.
2) Insert grid while imagining where lights would go.
3) Adjust grid if necessary.
4) Insert lights.
5) Adjust grid if necessary and move lights.

Practice. You need to train your eyes to see possible patterns before drawing.
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Coach
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Re: PASS, No amber subscription

Postby spike » Fri Oct 27, 2017 9:57 pm

Thanks Coach. Will try again and post
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Re: PASS, No amber subscription

Postby yup1961 » Tue Oct 31, 2017 8:49 am

Yeah what Coach said. I tried putting different constraints on the practice Vignette (like putting the rigid duct on the top) to see how I would react to it in the time allowed. Because it's not a straight forward it make you think about the limits of what can and can't work.

Make a table for all the duct area stuff, go clockwise or whatever makes sense. Run through common mistakes you've made and check after WHILE you being timed (ex. did I put all the return ducts the correct way, are all my lights within a grid, etc.).

Get it done as fast as possible so you have time to check them. Knock on wood, I haven't failed any tests yet but I have caught 1 to 3 mistakes on all my vignettes while I'm pouring over them in the last 15 minutes. Do not click the end button. Let the time run out and keep running through it.
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Re: PASS, No amber subscription

Postby spike » Thu Nov 02, 2017 12:44 pm

thanks for the advice! wish me luck. Do you know where the Alt files are ?
thanks in advance
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