kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Dec 09, 2015 at 10:59:01AM -0700, Andy Peters wrote:

> Can someone please definitively explain the purpose of the Grid Origin
> in pcbnew? This comes up on the user list and Kicad.info forums
> regularly.

OK, since it's more or less an invention of mine, here's what meant for:

Let's say you usually place metric component on a 0.5 mm grid. And then
you have to lay down an array of terminal blocks, which are horribly
imperial in nature (there are metric ones, but imperial are more
common...).

Here how to do it: place the first one, set the grid origin on pin 1 and
then switch to a bigger imperial grid (most likely 100mil, in this
case). Then happily move on the grid you parts.

In short: the grid origin helps when you need to align a grid which is
smaller or not an integer multiple of the current one on a point of the
current grid.

I reckon that most (maybe all?) of its use case can be covered with the
new array tools (which I didn't tried yet, so I don't actually know...)

-- 
Lorenzo Marcantonio
CZ Srl - Parma