When trying to locate a component exactly in the centre of a PCB, for example, is there a way to add guidelines to the drawing?
It would also help when drawing more complex board outlines.
Guidelines or rulers would help a lot, but I couldn’t find any?
(I have since found dimensions that help a bit)
You can set the grid to a relatively coarse setting which makes it more obvious when objects line up, use a full screen cursor or draw guidelines on one of the user layers. You can select multiple items and right click and select align and distribute functions. Quite a few options.
You can draw whatever you like on any of the user layers. That is what those layers are for.
When you have complex PCB outlines, it is usually better to not draw the PCB outline in KiCad, but to draw it in an external CAD program, export as .DXF file, and then import that in KiCad.
OK, I didn’t know you could import .dxf’s
Thanks for the tip!
For simple alignment and alignment checking it might be helpful to turn on the full window crosshair in the settings (the left toolbar Change cursor shape also toggles this behavior).
Personally, I always run with the full window crosshair turned on, but that is only my personal preference.
You can put any item anywhere on the “page”.
What I did in this example was to put the resistor anywhere on the page, but on the “grid”. I then placed the “edge cuts” around the part on the same “grid”.
At this point, I can now move the part and edge cuts to anywhere on the “page”, and the part will remain in the center of the finished pcb.
Is that because the “grid” is square and you placed its center at screen coordinates (0,0) ? If yes, how did you do that ?
In this example I have selected the “page” setting to be “USLettter 8.5x11in”. I moved the mouse cursor to the outside of the upper left of the “page”. This is where the KiCad origin is; as can be seen by the X and Y both showing 0.0000. I also pressed the space bar at this location for the reference origin to be 0.0000 at this location also.
In this screenshot I have moved the PCB off of the main grid, near the corner of the “page”, and it shows that the resistor is still centered on the PCB.
Place the part you want to be in the center of your PCB somewhere on the page and on reasonble grid (as seen in the first screengrab, I used 5mils). Note: The footprint does have to have the Anchor in the center. Then press the space bar to use this location as the local origin. Then use this to draw the board outline around the center of the part.
I think the confusion is that you already have a board outline and you want to find the center of it.
I placed the part, made it the center, then drew the outline around the part.
Okay, Sprig. Thank you for taking time to explain.
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