How can you easily set coordinates relative to eachother?

[bask185]

For somebody else I am designing some PCB’s. I have received images with measurements. The 0, 0 position is the center of the PCB.

This is one out of 7 images I got.

My current method exists out of adding alot of measurements. This is not ideal.

What I’d like to do, is to set PCBnew’s origin (which is always somewhere outside your working sheet) to a place of choise. I could do this in Eagle. Than I can fill in absolute values in the footprint’s properties box.

During typing this, I have found a “tollerable” workaround. I simply drag the entire PCB around.

However this is also a strange thing to do and the default sheet would sit in the way for larger things.

So all my problems make me curious. What is the PCBnew way of doing things?

Kind Regards

Bas

[wxE5]

Select a component and create a local origin with <space>. Then select another component and hit <shift>-p for a relative movement. Select “Use Local Origin”. Rinse and repeat.

[eelik]

Have you tried Preferences → PCB Editor → Origins & Axes?

[mf_ibfeew]

You could use the global Preferences–>pcb editor–>origins&axes -->use “drill origin” or “grid origin”.
And subsequently set the drill(or grid origin) to your desired location using Place–>drill/grid origin.

However, my method for similar tasks is different:

• don’t change the origins
• instead:
• mark your “wanted” origin with something which works as a snapping point (for instance place a footprint)
• than move/copy the other items to that point and use “Move exactly”.
• you could also directly use the “Move with reference” command

PCBnew’s origin is always somewhere outside your working sheet

That was also a annoyance for me in the first days of working with kicad. I used a solution suggested in this forum: build your own page worksheet. In my case it consists only of a marking cross at origin (0,0), no frame or other things. So I can draw my board around this origin, or use the origin as board edge.

[bask185]

Yeay! learned another thing. I selected the hole in the middle hit space, and -p does the trick.
I really should read the manual some day.

Thnx y’all

[ekoeck]

Pro-Tip: You can also use arithmetic operations in (all?) input fields. So you can just type 91+10 for example in the properties dialog.
EDIT: And thanks for shift+P, didn’t know about this one, yet

[glenenglish]

In Altium, there is a (alpha blendable see-thru) panel that floats around the workspace (so it doesn’t get in the way) that continuously shows deltaX, delta Y etc amongst other things)
gives you information of EVERYTHING under the mouse pointer
Maybe a useful feature addition.