I need to get the locations of the holes in a board design. I can click on a through-hole pad and hit E to get its properties, but the X, Y coordinates it shows is relative to the sheet origin.
I’d like to set the origin to the center of one of the holes, something I can’t figure out how to do, S lets me set it to any grid point, but doesn’t let me just click on a feature and have it set to that feature’s origin.
And even once I set a grid origin (or a drill origin), E still only shows coordinates relative to the sheet origin.
Is there any way I can get the holes relative to a custom origin?
Right mouse click on the item and select “Positioning Tools”. There are four different methods of measuring and placing - explore.
Also, place the cursor in a position, click space bar (which will zero dx & dy). See the centre right of your screen, below the work space.
You can then watch the change in distance with dx & dy relative to the space bar zero position as you move the cursor.
The spacebar is handy for quick resetting to zero of relative coordinates.
For a more “permanent” zero location, use the File / Drill/Place File Origin. It’s in the menu, but also in the toolbar in the right side of the PCB editor. All icons with a small triangle in the lower right corner have a foldout function that gets activated with a long mouse press.
Thank you, @jmk, this seems to be the right answer. Doing this, I can now inspect the current location of the pad with numbers that are easier to work with.
Unfortunately, none of those shows the current position, only 0, 0 and options to move the part.
Unfortunately this doesn’t snap to the hole center, so isn’t an accurate way of determining where the hole is.
I’m pleased you found a suitable solution from the choices.
The “Positioning Tools” > Position Relative to … is great for placing the hole exactly in the first place.
Amongst other references you can set your custom origin, type in the distance from your set origin to the hole centre as required (polar or cartesian), select the appropriate hole, then OK. Hole is where you want it; no need to check.
Hmm. I upgraded to v8, and this no longer seems to work. I set the preference to be grid origin, set the grid origin to the center of a pad, but when I get the position of that pad (which I expect to be 0,0), I get -134.00175, -92.6161).
Switching to Page Origin and inspecting pads with E (Properties), I see now that the position is relative to the part, not the page. Is this a change in v8?
I’m still trying to work out what is showing in the “position x & y” in the pad properties panel. Something is strange.
You can read the distance directly for any pad with the new properties panel on the left of the screen, using either the “page origin” or the “grid origin”. View > Show properties panel.
