Snap Ref Des to Grid

[aaronkalani27]

I opened up an old projects and components, wires and ref des were not snapped to grid which made it almost impossible to add more components that would be on the grid. I was able to select all and align components to grid, but how can I do the same for the reference designators which are still in their initial positions? It would also be helpful if there was a way to snap everything to grid at once including the wires, if possible, but if I had to manually rewire everything that is less of an issue that manually changing the properties of each ref des (and resistor/cap value for that matter) to be set at a position that is a whole integer.

Is there a script that can go through each object including refdes/value/text and move them to the nearest integer position of inches? Or an easier way to select all and get everything to snap to grid? Thanks in advance. 

[jorge_garcia · Accepted solution]

Hi @aaronkalani27,

I hope this message finds you well. You can use the cmd-snap.ulp that comes with Fusion 360 to snap everything on the board to a specific grid. Just go to automation > ULP.

With that said, it generally isn't a problem to have texts off grid so I'm really interested in knowing your concern about that.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

[aaronkalani27]

I appreciate the response, and will try that. The main concern was that a group of resistors/caps that were neatly ordered in a pattern on the schematic would have their reference designators offset and it did not look good. I may have made it sound like a bigger deal than it was but it was annoying to have reference designators that I couldn't stack on top of each other. 

Again thank you for the solution 

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @aaronkalani27,

Just a follow up. You can leverage the AUTOPOSTION command to reset all of the values and ref-designators to their library positions in one go. You could even automate it following the tip in this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2rVcTw_N7A

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

[aaronkalani27]

I think there was some confusion with my initial question. I am working in the schematic view not the PCB. The components, wires and text are not aligned with the grid on my electronics schematic. Is there a command for this?

--edited I found the command snap-on-grid-sch which did exactly what I wanted. I executed by going automation > ULP as you said

[chris_cummingsDT]

Good Morning! @jorge_garcia is there a way to snap only a set of selected items to the current grid? There are times that we have some objects previously placed that might look better on the PCB if they were all on a grid (the current grid, which can be set specifically for this one task, then set back to our default).

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @chris_cummingsDT,

I hope you're doing well. You would have to change the grid, move the items you are interested in and then switch the grid back. If you anticipate doing this a lot, or have several different grids you want to place components to then you can assign the various grid configurations to shortcuts that way you can quickly switch between them.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

[chris_cummingsDT]

OK. Gotcha, but no way to select a set of them to get only those selected objects to snap to the current grid. I would set the grid I want, select and move each object manually, like we do now.

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @chris_cummingsDT,

You could use the align command to have all members of the selection snap to the current grid.  So change grid, form selection, align command, change the grid back to whatever you want.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

[chris_cummingsDT]

Wow. What a novice I am. Thanks for being patient, Jorge! I have aligned Top, Bottom, Left but never "To Grid!" I did not see that option before.