I see other similar questions but I’m not sure if their answers are still valid.
When routing ICs with different pitches and often placed at specific locations, aligning the grid to the pad you’re routing from, is very handy. It’s not enough to change the grid pitch: if the pad does not lay on the grid lines (and sometimes you cannot do this) your design will be a mess!
Setting the grid origin to a pad center has always been easy. Select the track tool, which then magnetically snaps to your pad, hit ‘s’ to set the origin.
This thread is about v4, so perhaps is not valid anymore. If I snap the track to the pad and hit s the grid is not “centered” to this pad anyway. I’m aware I cannot move the true origin (0, 0) of the grid. I’m just looking to place any “dot” of the grid on the pad’s center, so all my new tracks will be aligned with that specific point.
Not exactly.
In v4 (by the way, why not use v5.1.8 when even 6.0 is a few months in the horizon?) the (0,0) in on top left corner and cannot be changed, right.
But the grid origin can be placed anywhere! It will not be at coordinates (0,0), of course.
The grid origin can be set at (50.254 , 100,635) if needed.
I do not have a copy of v4 at hand. Look at the icons on the right toolbar or in the menu View->Grid settings
Edit: I see your comments about v4 are not about your kicad version but about the thread you quoted, right?
Exactly, I’m using v5.1.7, waiting for the stable release of v6.
Still, it’s not clear to me how to place either the “origin” or at least any dot of the grid at the center of a pad (without calculate its coordinates manually). Thanks!
Well, instead of making calculations, there is a trick.
In the preferences, set the magnetic point to Snap to pad always. Select the add track tool and place it on the desired pad. Now you can see the coordinates of the centre of the pad.
Usually, magnetic points snap to pad solves your problem. In my case, I use the grid origin mainly for routing BGAs. I set the grid origin on one of the pads and the user grid to 1/2 , 1/3 or 1/4 of the pitch size.
In the preferences, set the magnetic point to Snap to pad always. Select the add track tool and place it on the desired pad. Now you can see the coordinates of the centre of the pad.
That’s true, but it would be very handy if in this condition pressing s (as described in the thread above) would automatically set one grid node at the current coordinates.