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Layout feature

Posted: May 20th, 2013, 4:01 am
by AFlowerday
I have used Pic Window Pro from version 3.5 and on, and have often thought when using the Layout Transformation that it would be useful to be able to enter exact dimensions of a 'panel' via a dialogue box rather than relying on stretching it onscreen. It is possible that this is already there somewhere and I have missed it. If it isn't, can this be added?

Andy

Re: Layout feature

Posted: May 20th, 2013, 6:14 am
by Dieter Mayr
It's not possible to enter the values directly.
But you can make the Layout-main window bigger and with a useful setting of Snap Grid you can work very precise.
And as the Layout save files (*.lyt) are plain text files you can edit them directly with any text editor.
Draw the panels roughly as you want them, save the layout, open the file in text editor and you can enter your position and size with a precision of 1/1000th inch.
For example a line from one of my layout files:
objlocation 0.000 5.080 7.000 10.080
The first two numbers are the coordinates of the lower left corner of the panel, the second two numbers are the coordinates of the upper right corner.
The coordinates are in respect to the lower left corner of the page.

But with a enlarged Layout window and a small Snap Grid you can work quiet precise.

Re: Layout feature

Posted: May 20th, 2013, 1:03 pm
by AFlowerday
Hi Dieter

Thank you for that info regarding setting the dimensions in a text file editor - I hadn't thought of that!

Andy

Re: Layout feature

Posted: May 21st, 2013, 1:21 am
by afx
It's a workaround, but still not very efficient. And having to do it in inches makes it even more annoying, I'd love to see more control over panel sizes within the tool.

cheers
afx

Re: Layout feature

Posted: May 21st, 2013, 4:17 am
by Dieter Mayr
On my 23" main display and even on my 17" laptop display I can easily work with a enlarged layout window and a snap grid of 0.5 mm, mostly I have it set for 1 mm, thats pretty fine already and I could not think of many things I would need more acuracy for.
But I din't say that the possibility to enter the values for size and position would not be a nice feature for a future version ;)

I hardly do any editing in the text editor anymore, that 0,5 mm grid is fine enough for my needs, and its even possible to go down at 0.2 mm grid if neccessary
And, yes, I agree, it's not fun to convert our metric measures to inches to build a layout in a text editor.