Voltera Community

outline step

mharris 2016-09-28 19:56:34 UTC #1

When trying to precisely set the position of the artwork on a blank board that has no features to line up with, it would be great to have the ability to move the selection by X and Y mm rather than dragging. When you just need it moved over 0.5mm further, it can be hard to drag it horizontally only, and know how far you've moved it.

Furthermore, you probably have this already, but is it possible to hold shift or alt or something and have the selection move in just one direction as you drag. This way if you're happy with say the Y positioning you can drag it just on X?

jazozaya 2016-09-28 20:21:04 UTC #2

Excellent request.

Could you describe your use case ? Are you trying to position connectors near the edge of a board or is there a different reason?

This is actually not possible at the moment. We could try and do the following behaviour:
Shift + Drag = Moves in 0.1 mm increments
Ctrl + Drag = Moves in 1 axis only.

Another option is to use the arrow keys, that would certainly be faster to implement and would get 2 birds with one stone. It would also be more consistent with the rest of the app.

Also - are you happy with the speed at which it does the outline? Should it be slower/faster?

mharris 2016-09-28 20:29:33 UTC #3

As I mentioned in my first post, its for precisely locating the part on a board with no fiducials (ie: single sided copper clad that i've cut up on the bandsaw) and which have features very close to the edge (such as edge connectors), or when your Y distance is very close to where the clamps are (don't want to clash with them!)

Arrow keys would be perfect for fine positioning, but the mouse is still faster for coarse adjustment.

From a software perspective having ctrl + drag as you mention should be a fairly simple change, as you'd just ignore the move on the axes with the smaller units.

I have another post asking for the outline speed to be adjustable, as well as the height. At the moment I really can't tell just how well centred I am on the substrate. For the boards with RF connectors on the edges I'm getting to the height mapping step and seeing which side the probe falls of the board, going back and adjusting position, reprobing, rinse and repeat until both sides get probed on the board. I have features within 0.2mm of the edge of the board on both sides... so alignment counts