Rotated Cursor / Crosshairs?

Doing a layout where a section of the board is at 45 degrees. It sure would be nice if the crosshairs could be rotated 45 degrees, also. If this already exists, I can’t find it.

The Mountain has to come to Mohamed :slightly_smiling_face:… you need to turn the PCB through 45°

Preferences > Preferences > PCB Editor > Editing Options > Steps for rotate commands = 45°

Then R for counterclockwise or assign a hotkey for clockwise.

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Yeah. That wasn’t exactly my question, I know how to change the rotation. Rotating my whole PCB 45 degrees would only be a partial solution — because only some sections of the PCB are at 45 degrees. Others are positioned the more traditional way (this is a circular board).

Having rotated crosshairs would really be helpful for those 45 degree sections. Currently I just draw guidelines on the user drawing layer. But that’s not as good as a truly rotated cursor would be.

I agree with @jmk - his advised solution would work for any arbitrary angle, as well as allow the designer to continue using the grid snapping, relative alignment, etc. As for parts designed at different rotations, group everything and rotate together.

Sorry @thestumbler

I shouldn’t have used this old saying

It basically means " if one way doesn’t work use another".
The angle of the crosshairs cannot be changed so to make work easier, change the angle of the board.

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Oh, I knew what you meant, and I liked the analogy. My point is that on a board with different regions, some at 45 degs, some at 90, it would be a nightmare to rotate the board when jumping around between sections. It’s also been my experience that rotating groups of circuits will often put things off-grid and results in a mess – although that might be more operator error than a Kicad issue.

If all the parts on the board were done at a wonky angle, your solution is great, and I’m adding that to my mental toolbox.

Seeing that feature does not exist, maybe you should file a bug report asking for it.
To make it easy for the reviewers, start your title “Feature Request”.

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Do you want the grid rotated, so x/y cursor movements would be 45° as well?

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You know, that’s an interesting thought. In my case, probably not. The grid is the grid and (I think?) it should remain constant. The crosshairs are just an alignment aid, like using a strait edge on a paper drawing.

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