This PE Mechanical cheat sheet compresses the NCEES HVAC & Refrigeration depth and its shared mechanical-engineering core into a fast, formula-first reference you can review the week of your exam. It's a premium cheat sheet built by Capital Prep — the one premium prep we trust — and it's yours free. Back it up with the rest of your free PE Mechanical toolkit: the practice test, study guide, and flashcards.
PE Mechanical exam at a glance
- Questions: 80 (computer-based, one depth exam)
- Time: 8 hours of exam time; about a 9-hour appointment with tutorial and a 50-minute break
- Passing standard: Pass/fail — criterion-referenced NCEES cut score, no fixed percentage
- Reference: Searchable NCEES PE Mechanical Reference Handbook only (on-screen)
- Cost: $400 NCEES exam fee (plus any state board fees; verify at NCEES.org)
- Administered by: NCEES at Pearson VUE test centers (year-round)
What’s on the PE Mechanical cheat sheet
- HVAC Equipment & Components (~34%) — chillers, cooling towers, air handlers, and the vapor-compression refrigeration cycle — the most heavily weighted HVAC-depth area.
- Distribution & Systems (~31%) — air- and water-side distribution — ducts, pipes, fans, pumps, head loss, and NPSH.
- HVAC Loads & Psychrometrics (~25%) — the psychrometric chart, sensible vs latent heat, and heating/cooling load basics.
- Supportive Knowledge (~10%) — the shared core drawn on across the exam — thermodynamics, heat transfer, machine design, materials, and dynamics.
How to use it in your final week
- Load thermodynamics first — first law ΔU = Q − W, Carnot η = 1 − T_cold/T_hot, and cooling COP = Q_L/W_in — because it feeds both psychrometrics and the refrigeration cycle you will see most.
- Front-load HVAC Equipment & Components and Distribution & Systems: together they carry about 65% of the 80 HVAC-depth questions, so mastering them from the sheet moves your score the most.
- Skim the sheet the morning of the exam for the memory hooks — always work in absolute temperature (K or °R), Re = ρVD/μ for laminar-vs-turbulent, and head-loss h_L = f(L/D)(V²/2g).
- Pair every review pass with a short timed set from the practice test using the NCEES handbook open, so locating equations and pacing across 80 questions in 8 hours stays automatic.
The cheat sheet is your review layer — your PE Mechanical practice test drives the exam-readiness ring at the top of this page. Download it, review, then take a full practice exam (or drill with the study guide and flashcards) to see where you stand.
PE Mechanical cheat sheet FAQ
Yes — the PE Mechanical cheat sheet downloads as a PDF with no account and no sign-up. It sits alongside Career Employer's free PE Mechanical practice test, study guide, and flashcards, so your whole prep stack costs nothing.
It condenses the core mechanical-engineering formulas and the HVAC & Refrigeration depth into a fast reference: thermodynamics and cycles, psychrometrics, fluid mechanics and head loss, heat transfer, and machine design — organized around the four NCEES HVAC depth areas so it maps to the exam blueprint.
The sheet is built around the HVAC & Refrigeration depth, the most commonly taken of the three, and its shared core (thermo, fluids, heat transfer, machine design) carries straight over to the Machine Design & Materials and Thermal & Fluids Systems depths. Confirm your chosen depth's area weights in the current NCEES specifications.
No — the exam is open only to the searchable NCEES PE Mechanical Reference Handbook shown on-screen, and no printed material is allowed in the test center. Use the cheat sheet to lock in the relationships before exam day, then practice locating every equation and property table fast in the handbook itself.
Click the download button (or the preview card) at the top of this page to open the PDF instantly. Bookmark the page so you can pull the sheet back up during your final week of review.
References
- 1.NCEES. “PE Mechanical Exam.” NCEES.org, 2026. ↑
- 2.NCEES. “PE Mechanical: HVAC and Refrigeration CBT Exam Specifications.” NCEES.org, 2025. ↑
- 3.NCEES. “Computer-Based Testing (CBT) at Pearson VUE.” NCEES.org, 2026. ↑
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