Moving the Origin is not very useful

I have just upgraded to version 5.1.10. I just tried setting the Origin to a location that would theoretically place my board well within the page watermark so that it doesn’t interfere with viewing the board itself. I have always placed the board outside this page margin so that I could view the whole board and put all placements into the negative Y direction. It has never been a problem with the PCB fabers because they seem to have a way to move the board features to suite their own coordinate system. But now I am wanting to place the board inside the page boundary so that it will show up when I print it to physical paper. But moving the Origin still doesn’t affect the coordinates that I use to place parts onto the board. I typically design from a mechanical drawing so all of the positions need to match the drawing. But setting the Origin doesn’t affect those coordinates for the placement of parts for such things as Edge Cuts. So moving the Origin seems to be totally useless to me. I’m going back to placing my board into negative Y space. I have thought about asking how to turn off the watermark but that would put my board at the very corner of the page (where the watermark will obscure it) and I’d rather center it when I want to print it. Some printers cut off print when it is too far to an edge.

Prior to the 5.99 development branch, the Auxiliary Origin (also called the Drill Origin) is used only when generating manufacturing data (Gerber and drill files).

There is a new feature in 5.99 that allows the PCB editor to display coordinates relative to the upper left corner of the page (5.1 behavior), the Grid origin, or the Aux origin. This is a per-user display configuration option that can be changed without altering the board file.

I think moving an origin in 5.1.10 is not possible. Instead you can move the whole PCB.

Negative Y in KiCad is positive in gerbers. Positive Y in KiCad is negative in gerbers.

Move the board itself.

If I well understand you, you call the sheet frame the watermark. If so - File-PageSettings-Page layout description file. I have defined the Page leyout containing only small cross at 0,0 coordinates, and place my PCBs so that it is in their center. I have tried to define empty layout but then default frame was used. But I have done my experiments when KiCad was 4.0.7 so may be 5.1.10 accepts empty page layout. Didn’t checked it.

I move the board just to print it. I just have to be careful not to save it that way because it is a lot of trouble to get the lower left corner back to the internal coordinate origin. If I leave the board inside the frame, the positions are all wrong so I don’t leave the board there.

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