 So what if you're working with force diagrams and you're given a set of equations for the forces and you need to construct the force diagram from those equations and Again, you're doing this generally because you want to have a visualization a picture of what's happening in your mind So let's just start off with say a set of equations where you have the sum of the forces of X and the sum of the forces of Y and and We can randomly put down some f1 f2 f3 f4 Okay, and in your equations, there's going to be various plus and minus signs This is a really simple one. So we'll start with this one first Well, again, I start with a box for my object just so I can keep track of what's going on Start with one of the two equations. So maybe your FX equation Recognize that what this means is these forces are either left or right with right being the positive direction and Left being the negative direction So from this equation the first thing in there is and the X equation is minus f1 So that means we would come over here and add our f1 in the negative direction F2 is listed in the positive direction in X So our f2 would be over here on this side From our f y set of equations. That's up and down. We've got plus f3 plus is going to be in the upwards direction and then negative F4 means that's going to be in the downward direction So once we've got our equations in this case, they were given to us We can construct a diagram to visualize which direction all of those forces are in Let's get a little bit more complicated one Let's say for this case. We've got plus f1 Minus f2, but then we've got a third force that shows up in both equations If we take a look at what these equations would say Well f1 is just in the positive X direction so we can draw that one in here really easily F2 is in the negative y direction. So that's going to come in here And go in that place really well When we start looking at the f3, there's an x part and a y part Now you can do this in a couple of ways if you're really really good with quadrants You simply look and say okay if I'm in the plus X and negative y That means I'm going to be over here In that quadrant so that's where my f3 has got to be If you're still a little shaky on those things what you can do is temporarily come in here and draw in Your components separately and then figure out what the arrow would be. So when we have plus f3 X That means it's over there to the right Minus f3 y means it's in the downward direction and again you see from those two components We would have something drawn off at an arrow