I need to precisely place a pin header, but the only dimensions provided are an offset to a pin of the header from another location:
Is there a best approach to do this?
If I knew the co-ordinates of the pin in the header, I can calculate the offset for the entire header.
my workflow:
For THT footprints typical is to have anchor at Pad1 so knowing pitch there is no problem to find offset for any other pad from footprint anchor (when you set the footprint position you set its anchor position).
“Move with Reference” is what you want.
Thanks for the suggestions, but none of them see to work well for me. The snap grid isn’t aligned with pin 34, so working out the precise location isn’t easy.
What I did do, was look at the footprint (editor) and figured out where the origin (0,0) is and the relationship to pin 34.
Then took the relative coordinates of pin34 back into the PCB editor and mapped it from the location of the pin header.
A little tedious, but I managed to get the required precision.
Sorry, I should have said “Position Relative To.”
That allows you to choose a reference object and an x/y offset.
At least for my proposed workflow it’s necessary to have the global setting: Preferences–>Common–>Warp mouse to anchor of moved object enabled.
Precise moves are sometimes a bit difficult, especially when the correct snap points are missing.KiCad does have the Move Exactly, Move with Reference and Position Relative To … functions from the popup menu, and usually one of them gets the job done. You can also move the grid origin with PCB Editor / Place / Grid Origin or PCB Editor / Edit / grid Origin which can also help.
Together, these functions are “adequate”, but they still feel lacking in some way. I guess this can / should be improved, but I’m not exactly sure how (my mind is a bit fuzzy lately). If you think you have a good idea on this topic, then writing up a feature request and posting it on gitlab is a good option.
Position Interactively is likely the tool you need here:
Position Interactively...If you want to snap to pads, you should also ensure the pad snap mode in the preferences is “always”.
Some more Position Relative methods will be in v10 (for example, also allowing the normal ,Position Relative dialog to choose the source reference point, i.e. the pad on the moved item in this case) but they’re not done yet.
@johnbeard - that seemed promising, but the initial “click” location isn’t snapped to the pad (snap to pad is “always”). It’s only after the first click the pad snap becomes active.
It should work (I can’t test it right now, though). What is your active layer and what is your snap layer mode (Shift-S, either all layers or only active layer)?
Ok . . I think I misunderstood how this works . . clicking the pin header first, then selecting the mounting hole, I can then go back and select pin 34.
(And although I did it the foot print way initially, this shows me the vertical offset is 1.23mm so that’s good confirmation). Many thanks!
You can select the two things in either order, the only thing that will change is the sign of the vector’s x and y. You just need to make sure that the thing you want to move is what you selected at the start of the process, or it’ll move the other thing!
It’s functionally similar to selecting the item by the relevant point, moving with M, then placing that point on the other reference point, then moving the selection again with Move Exact and entering your offset.
For quick verification of relative offsets, there’s also the ruler tool.
