@ AutoCad experts: snap to midpoint of a rectangle?

[rambinator]

Hi there!

I have to redo my frontpanel design in a very short time  with AutoCad because there will be a bulkorder from mexico on the german forum.

As I am not an expert (maybe not even a beginner yet) with AutoCad I encountered some essential problems I need to solve.

1. I have rectangular breakthroughs for buttons. These buttons will be on a vectorboard so I need to align their midpoints to a 2.54mm grind, right? With circles thats not a problem i can grip the midpoint with snap-mode on (snap to middle activated)  and then drag it to any point on the grid. With rectangles I can't grip to the midpoint, the mouse doesn't seem to find it.

2. The grid is only beeing displayed in a small area around the coordinates' origin. I want it to be displayed everywhere, is this possible?

I would appreciate any suggestion as I need to work this out quite fast.

Thnx

rambinator

[Fx3_hdrive]

i'm doing autocad as a part of my college course  ;D i can help you but u must describe the problem more clearly

i wouldnt recomend allinging the button cutouts to the grid since that brings its own problems, u can work out how far they are apart ,from each other, so if the pitch of the board is 2.54mm, and u want to have your buttons to be 100 mm from each other. have them at (2.54x39=99.06) that will give u allinged position,

i think u can also change the grid to that and then use Move command, make sure u turn off snap to grid in the lower bottom panel.

i'm at coll now so i  dont have much time, exqueeze me for mistakes

Yarek T

[rambinator]

If you find the time it would be very helpfull to explain why aligning to the grid wouldn't be helpfull, because

it's beeing suggested in this thread:

http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=1629.0

If I didn't use the grid I would have to calculate the distances for every type of button (means: [number of holes between the buttons] x 2,54 - [distance from the button's pin to the edge + play between button and edge of the hole]). that would be quite complicated.

[Fx3_hdrive]

oh yeah i know what u mean,

With circles thats not a problem i can grip the midpoint with snap-mode on (snap to middle activated) and then drag it to any point on the grid. With rectangles I can't grip to the midpoint, the mouse doesn't seem to find it.

in autocad squares dont have a center point, so what u have to do is draw two construction lines through the centre, and then drag it to your allingment grid, then delete the lines

1 last point. make sure that your button is in the middle of the holes on the vector board, that way u know to place your center of your button on the middle of 4 holes on the vector board

(i can draw u an example, or can u send me your panel on mi email if u want me to look at it, then i could help more, (make sure u save it as a drawring file otherwise i wont be able to open it in solidworks.

fx3_hdrive(at)hotmail(dot)com

Yarek T

[rambinator]

1 last point. make sure that your button is in the middle of the holes on the vector board, that way u know to place your center of your button on the middle of 4 holes on the vector board

I don't understand exactly what you mean. My idea was that i just had to choose the same point on each button (be it the center or a corner...) and align it to the grid because the only thing that matters is the distance which has to be a multiple of 2.54mm. Later when I mount the panel and the vectorboard i can move the board in any direaction till the buttons fit thru and then drill some holes in the vectorboard at those places where I have screwholes on the panel.

I appreciate jour help very much and I think I will be able to send you my draft tomorrow.

thnx

rambinator