I have several components at 45 degrees. They snap slightly misaligned. I can move them freehand, but I never know if they are actually aligned. Is there a way to align top/middle/bottom, etc, when they are at 45 degrees? “space evenly”, etc, would also be useful too.
Thanks.
Here I want to align R9, R10 & C12:
Same problem as with horizontal or vertical rows.
When you move footprints, you can grab them by either a pad, or by their anchor point. If you move some by grabbing them by a pad, and another by grabbing it by it’s anchor point, then they do not line up on the grid.
Because pad spacing of SMT resistors and capacitors does not work on any grid, it’s probably easiest to standardize by always putting their anchor point on the grid (geometrical center for SMT, also for PnP placement files).
THT footprints usually have their anchor point on Pin1. Some people dislike this, but I am OK with this myself. I prefer to put THT parts on a 2.54mm grid to keep designs (sort of) matrix board compatible. This eases rework and design for me.
It’s certainly possible.
Choose a good grid and take a second to think how a grid of squares work. There’s an imaginary 45 degree diagonal line over consecutive grid points. You just can’t move the cursor directly from one to the next; it snaps in zigzag. For example right-down-right-down…
Another option: position them when they are vertical/horizontal. Select them all, use Positioning Tools → Move Exactly → [rotate with 45 deg angle].
video… may help…
Another tip: draw a 45 degree helper line on a graphic layer.
And finally – I didn’t see this coming… it just seems to work!
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You could lay them out horizontally or vertically then deal with them as a group when you move them to 45°.
That’s how I always do it. However, a rotated coordinate system when working with rotated parts would be pretty cool too
Thanks. The distribute horizontally working for you is just a coincidence that you already have them snapped on a grid with the correct spacing. It doesnt work on mine. I think the answer is to adjust the grid, then they snap in place correctly. Thanks…
You need to distribute in both axes, and it assumes the end items are already 45 degrees from each other (position relative/ move exact tools in polar mode can help with that).
Snapping centres to a suitable grid is probably the easiest way. Remember that a sqrt(2)/2 = 0.707(10678118…)mm grid will produce a diagonal of 1mm. If you need a specific 45-degree spacing a lot, you can define a custom grid for that purpose.
In fact, as grids don’t have to be square, you can also do non-45 degree angles this way. E.g. for 30 degrees, tan(30) = 0.5773, so a 1x0.5773 allows 30-degree alignment:
