Can I move the drawing sheet to a different location?
It’s just more handy to have the 0/0 origin in the centre of the design.
Marko
Just select everything in the layout with ctrl-a and move it to the centre of the sheet.
This is exactly what I don’t want to do.
I have edited frame to contain only small cross at 0,0. When I tried to make it empty it showed standard frame. I was doing it with KiCad V4. Not sure - may be now you can have it empty.
See also:
First of all, I have never, ever printed out a pcb drawing that included the title block, and I consider it unneeded. But I still build my board inside it.
You want to have a 0,0 point that makes sense – have you used the set-grid-origin tool (and the adjacent set-drill-origin tool)?
I usually set my origin to the lower left corner of the board area, and also set the drill origin there so gerber offsets are all positive.
In the case of a circular board, yes it is nice to set the origin to the center of the pcb (but I would still leave drill origin in lower-left corner).
Besides the silly pcb title block, the choice of 0,0 in upper-left of the page is silly (and probably came from programmers who use upper-left for graphic screen layout), and to make things even sillier, the Y- direction does down.
But you can fix this silliness, but setting your origin where you want it, and also using the pcb-preferences to reclaim sanity:
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Not only nice and not only for circular boards. For any board having any symmetry it is easier if you for example place hole at X=-32mm and X=32mm and the same in Y direction. Less chance to make mistake.
As most my PCBs are symmetry (for example DIN rail boxes) I moved with my work to 0,0 before making my first KiCad PCB (it was KiCad V4).
I have read that with V8 origin can be moved but recently I have checked that it can only be:
- the same as drill origin (what I don’t want - drill origin to bottom left while origin in center),
- the same as grid origin (what I also don’t want - origin in center, grid origin when needed).
So I have to stay working at top left corner.
I don’t understand @Piotr – I don’t see a limitation on grid or drill origin. My above screenshot was from kicad v7 on a win laptop, but here is an example using 8.0.6 on a linux laptop:
In this case I have grid origin in center of pcb, and drill origin in lower left (of what will become an array of little boards). So I am unsure what concern you have over v8.
I am answering without testing it once more so I can be in error but don’t think so.
I just want at the same time:
- to have drill origin in bottom left PCB corner,
- absolute origin in PCB center,
- grid origin movable acording to my needs
See for example this case:
You have 4 series of 5.08 raster terminal blocks but if you set grid 5.08 and its origin in PCB center terminal blocks are not ‘in grid’. So to correctly place them easy it would be good temporarily have grid 5.08 and grid origin at first/last terminal block of each serie. Having all the time the absolute origin in PCB center helps you ensure yourself that you place grid origin correctly - you have to place it 4 times in 4 symmetry points (so the same X/-X and Y/-Y) coordinates.
A month ago I was sure that it can be done with V8 working inside sheet frame but as I was used to my way I just didn’t checked it. But some thread (don’t remember) made me to check it and it looks for me that it is not possible.
At the same time working around absolute origin allows you to move grid origin having absolute origin all the time in PCB center.
Hmm. I use “exact move” tricks for things like this (also handy when making a footprint). Kinda like this:
I have never used a din-rail so just guessing on the connector offsets by measuring a printout, but for illustration:
Set grid to something big like 25.4, set grid-origin down on a grid point in middle of page, and plop connector down near it:
Grab connector by pin-1 and pull onto origin grid point:
Right-click connector, positioning-tools/move-exactly, x = 6.35 and y = 38.1:
Plop nuther connector, grab pin-9 and pull onto origin grid point:
Then right-click this connector, positioning-tools/move-exactly, x = -6.35 and y = 38.1.
Do the same sort of thing for the other two connectors (down to -38.1)…
Lock the connectors so you don’t move them (shadows are on here to show that):
Add edge cut outline (lock that too), and I like to add a little crosshair (lines) at the center origin on user-layer-1 in case I temporarily move the grid origin and later want to plop it back in the pcb center.
Now I would set my grid to 0.1mm typically and start the layout. I don’t care what grid the components are on, and I don’t care if traces go “exactly” into inch-grid connectors.
I would also put the drill origin in lower-left (not shown here) just to keep the excellon numbers all positive, but it probably does not matter with fab houses today, so it can probably be in a random spot and still work just fine. Note: My Y-axis is always always always set to positive up (one of the first kicad settings I tweak).
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Of course everything can be done in many ways.
I can get what I want by placing drill origin in my PCB center and absolute origin to be drill origin. And as the last task move the drill to left bottom.
I worked that way with Protel 3 and sometimes I forgot to move it back.
So I prefer to place such things once and in correct places to not have to remember to do something as a last step.
I just think that it would be better if all 3 origins (absolute, drill and grid) could be positioned freely on sheet and not absolute being fixed to use only top left of sheet or one of the others. What I write are only arguments pro and not absolute must have.
So you were not using V5.
Yeah, I never use that, and really don’t care where it is located (and really don’t care if the pcb has a title block, which I also never see) – I can do everything I need with the grid-origin. The drill origin is only needed at gerber/excellon-generation time.
But very rarely it happens to write coordinates manually and than you use absolute coordinates so it is important where 0,0 is. Even not writing manually when I position something that have to have specific position I want to see absolute coordinate when positioning.
I’ve never had any use for the layout title block. I just move the board to roughly the centre of the sheet to look a little better. If you find a procedure to centre it that would be good.