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this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2026
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CassetteFuturism
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Even though that diagram seems complicated, it really isn’t. If you ever get the chance to play around with a modern automation software in an actual power plant or a factory, you’ll be overwhelmed. The number of tanks, pipes, pumps, valves, flow meters, level indicators, pressure gauges, temperature sensors etc. is absolutely enormous. What you see on the wall would be just a high level overview. Often you would need to drill one or two levels deeper to find what you’re really looking for.
Although, old industrial facilities were very simple by modern standards, so maybe that diagram really did have everything.
I'll make you a deal-- I feel natural when it comes to the arts, philosophy, writing, history, logic puzzles, dancing, singing, and so forth, but try as I might, I've BARELY been able to learn electrical diagrams and flow diagrams across my life, so let me leave that expertise to you? 😅
(and don't we all kinda form silly team-ups like that amongst our friends & family? each with our silly strengths and weaknesses, in order to form a 'whole?')
I hope you liked the other pics in link... to me they were equally boss!
Thanks, I really enjoyed the other pictures too. Modern control rooms are just a bunch of displays and keyboards in a row. The old ones were all custom made, which gave them plenty of character.
Technical diagrams can be hard to read, and they probably aren’t going to get any simpler in the future as we keep on adding more layers of complexity to every factory and plant. Don’t know about electrical diagrams though, since I haven’t needed those very often.
I remember in the wake of my trying to understand circuit boards that I came across one that looked different. Upon closer inspection, it was actually multiple circuit boards all packed together, wafer-thin. Machine / robot-produced of course. That was in the 90's, I think. I don't know how someone might possibly un-encrypt / understand the exact set of those circuit planes without... some sort of special tools, I imagine.