Aligning PCB features with external constrants

advanced
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I have been designing a couple of small PCBs that carry some LEDs, photodiodes, and screw holes, all of which which need to align with holes in a 3D printed block. Two things make this unnecessarily hard. (Using v 1.06)

  • Most holes in an engineered object are defined by the coordinates of their centres and the diameter or radius. But holes, or component outlines, in Fritzing have positions that appear to be defined by the coordinates of the upper left corner, and the dimensions are not given so have to be measured by the cursor and DRO at the bottom right of the window. Getting the CENTRE of the component aligned with an external coordinate is therefore rather involved and subject to error. Am I missing something here?
  • The grid in PCB view is really low contrast. I’ve followed the various guidelines to improve this but it is still very poor.

Please tell me I’m missing something obvious! Or maybe note the problem for a potential future feature.

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I think the closest matching feature request is Hole Position · Issue #3980 · fritzing/fritzing-app · GitHub

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The UI could do the translation though, without breaking anything.

I also find it a pain, my way of dealing with it is to move the planned hole to the 0,0 coordinates and then note the offset and finally place the hole at its intended coordinates minus the offset.

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There are work-arounds, but this is not just an issue for holes such as mounting holes. Also an issue for components that have to align, for example LEDs with apertures in a housing or switches and buttons and sockets etc.. Also very useful would be the ability (which most drawing packages have) to align features. For example to align the centres of LEDs in a row.