Draw: Granularity of arrow keys

  1. How do I reduce the amount of “nudge” when I move objects with the arrow keys?

  2. Is this Grid, Resolution or Snap? I tried to change the settings in Preferences but no luck.

  3. How do I request that a subject be added to LO Help? (In this case, “nudge” is a word that is commonly used in graphics programs, but does not appear here.)

Thank you.

The amount that an object in Draw is moved, is a factor of the scale of the drawing e.g., Tools > Options… > LibreOffice Draw > General > Scale section. By default this is 1:1 and at this scale these are the different movement amounts:

  • Cursor key, unmodified: 1.0mm / ~0.04in / ~2.8pt
  • Cursor key + SHIFT: 10.0mm / ~0.4in / ~28.3pt
  • Cursor key + ALT[1]: 0.26mm / ~0.01in / ~0.74pt

At a scale of 1:2 these amounts are doubled, while at 2:1 they are halved, and so on.

The “snap” settings are a way of getting an object to move to / align with a nearby grid line. The LO Help pages come under the domain of the LO Web administration and / or LO Documentation teams.

[1] As @Regina points out in a separate answer, the amounts when using the ALT modifier are additionally dependent upon the zoom level. Figures shown are indicative when viewing at 100% zoom.

Aside from the fact there are still a lot of people stuck with the inch system, there is no way that I can see to grab a window of objects and drag them on grid lines, so shifting a drawing that needs accuracy requires moving each object one at a time. Shifting an object by one pixel may be useful, but tying Shift and Alt to the major and minor grid only makes common sense. Seriously, it’s not practical to use our calculators to figure out how to nudge an object by one grid division.

The combination with ALT does not depend on the size of the drawing, but uses pixels of the screen. Therefore you can get very small steps relative to the drawing, if you zoom in.

Oh, so it does. Thanks. I will correct my answer.

How do I accomplish this in OSX?