Hello all, I’m realising a led matrix and after import from schematic I want to get align all Led by a matrix of 8X16, what’s the best way to do that ?
As you can see here I put all 128 Led but they are not align to grid exactly (manual positioning), the grid used is 0,127 mm.
The easiest way would have been to first set a custom grid, and then just move them on the grid. Then you would have been finished after the first move.
You can also draw an array, but that creates new parts, and you introduce difficulties with the Reference Designators.
A third way of wishful thinking is if the “Align Elements to Grid” would have been available in the PCB editor, but this only works in the schematic.
A way that works, and is relatively quick is to:
Position the parts in the corners manually, either by one of the move functions, or by typing coordinates directly in their “properties” box.
Select the leftmost column, and then Right Click / Align_Distribute / Distribute Vertically from the popup menu.
Repeat this for the right most column.
Repeat for each row, but do it with Right Click / Align_Distribute / Distribute Horizontally
The pcb-action-tools plugin may also be useful for this. It claims to be able to snap existing footprints to a grid. So just set your grid, select the footprints and run the plugin. I have not used it myself though.