The armillary sphere's structure was very simple at the beginning, with three rings and a metal axis. The axis was oriented to the North and South Poles. The outermost ring, the meridian ring, was fixed in the north-south direction. The middle ring, the equatorial ring, was aligned to the earth's equatorial plane. Finally, the innermost one, the Chijing ring, had a sighting tube and could revolve around the metal axis. To use the armillary, one pointed the sight at a particular star and then you read the angles off the different rings to identify the exact position of the star. Later, more rings were added to take different measurements, so that the modern examples from the Ming dynasty are much more elaborate than the originals.

On the base of the armillary you can see a shallow trough in the square base. This was filled with water to level the instrument. A method to attach a plumb line might also have been available since it was a common instrument, but it is not immediately apparent.