7 cups of Black Coffee and I’m now ready to introduce the “Common Man’s solution”…
No Plugin needed…
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Good info, thanks. Appreciate the reply.
Hello @tormyvancool
I read the Gitlab request. It is mentioned:
It would be very nice to have Rulers on the top and side of the drawing space, especially on PCBNew, like in several other CADs.
“especially on PCBNew”"
I was wondering where else besides PCB Editor you wish to have rulers?
I placed a comment on your request wishing rulers are optional if introduced.
Is that a real banana in the PCB Editor?
And is it scalable?
Having Scalable pixel graphics in the PCB Editor is a Huge double plus good for reverse engineering. You just make a few pictures of a PCB (Top, bottom footprints, silkscreen), put it in the background and trace over it (While allowing / compensating for picture distortion, etc.
I noticed yo can import photographs in the Schematic Editor, but I had not seen it in the PCB Editor.
It is also not mentioned in: Post-v6 new features and development news
A EU-Standard Banana according to (EC) No. 2257/94
(Some random text here, because i previously replied to the wrong person and it won’t let me post the same text again without changing the text)
I’m convinced that fixing the regressions in the router is more urgent for the moment 
Aside from the reverse engineering and EU-standardized bananas, what would be the practical use of scalable bitmap graphics in the PCB editor?
Thankyou @johannespfister
I read the EU regulation. That regulation seems to center around the bend of a standard banana and whether it is normal or abnormal.
It does, however, quote minimum length and thickness for normal bananas in mm, but the EU has standardised to metric and the EU doesn’t grow bananas so we still do not know if the banana posted by @twl is Metric or Imperial.
I do believe though, that the bend of the posted banana would fall within the EU acceptably normal range. 
As the internal pcbnew unit is 1nm, the resolution of the ruler must be 1nm too.
So the use of a suitable grid is much more powerful than any ruler.
So I payed a bit attention to this. It is not often that I find myself looking for the ruler.
When starting a PCB I want to know the origin of the coordinate system, because I like to build stuff near the origin. This could be also provided by just emphasizing the origin somehow.
Sometimes when placing components, a quick look at the ruler gives me a good impression of the actual physical dimensions, especially when zoomed in a lot… I can judge that way whether I feel that some things should have more or less clearence. This step is often done for coarse placement, and can be later refined if needed with exact coordinates.
PS: I have just read the remaining posts and realized that this has become a shitshow or making fun of people who use rulers, so I will leave you guys to it…
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In V5 I edited the Page layout description file (*.kicad_wks) to contain only small cross at 0,0 position.
Then if my PCB was symmetric I placed it to have that cross in its center.
I didn’t tried yet V6 where (as I have read) you can move origin. May be the other solution will be better.
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Most likely you don’t know about the Auxiliary Origin and the Grid Origin…
Two tools in the Tool strip. After placing them, Move cursor to desired 0,0 location and press the spacebar to set it as 0,0
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You can’t talk about my life experience nor express yourself about the meaning of the phrase not anything else. Keep in track with the topic. Thanks
With V6, I suggest this:
- In the “Origins and Axes” preferences, change the display origin to “Drill/Place origin”.
- If desired, change the Y axis direction to “Increases up”.
- When starting a layout, place the “Drill/Place origin” at the desired location on the board. I prefer the lower left corner.
From this point, the displayed coordinates will be relative to the Drill/Place origin, rather than the upper left corner of the “page” on which the layout is drawn.
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V6 allows you to display all coordinates relative to the Drill/Place (aka “auxilliary”) origin or the Grid origin by setting to the “Origins and Axes” preferences. You can also change the direction in which the X and Y axes increase.
This is a persistent, per-user configuration. It does not change the board file at all, so you can experiment with it without changing the board layout.
If someone is still thinking about the rulers, my idea would be that the rulers follow the displayed coordinates, that is, origin and direction like RRPollack has described in the steps 1-3 above.
Thus no additional settings for the rulers would be needed, just a “rulers on-off” for those who don’t want them.
Of course it would be good to have some kind of smart algorithm to make the scale and numbering on the rulers intuitively helpful.
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This is good!
The request on Gitlab is sadly lacking detail.
Those wishing for a ruler should detail exactly what they want on Gitlab otherwise the request will probably be dismissed.
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Hey that looks good. But I couldn’t find these options …
I can change the origin to depend on Drill Origin in the Prefs, but I cannot graphically highlight the Origin. Where is this option ?
Nevermind, I just found the “Add Layer Alignment Target” crosshair and placed it at the Origin.
Hi @tobalt
There is also “Grid Origin Target” (second from bottom in “Place”) I mentioned way up in this thread.
This target gives you a zero point for the X & Y reading at the bottom centre of the screen. The X & Y directions can be changed in Preferences / Preferences / Origins and Axes and are accurate to 3 or 4 decimal places as well as interchangeable between Metric and Imperial.
If I need a certain sized PCB I will:
Set a coarse suitable Grid,
Find a suitable layer to draw a maximum size outline.
Place a Grid Origin Target.
Draw a graphical border for the maximum allowable size by following the X & Y display.
This gives me a good size reference of the board without the hassle of having to refer to rulers.