I am creating a diagram in libredraw that contains a number of disparate shapes, and want them to be aligned vertically and horizontally. Using align is cumbersome because there are so many and I want them aligned in both dimensions. If I could have the centre of each object (instead of the edge) snap to the grid, they would be automatically aligned both vertically and horizontally.
Is this possible and, if so, how?
Alas, as far as I have found, snap to grid only works on object contour features, not on more abstract properties such as center point or anchor point, nor on added glue points.
Conceivably, you could draw a helper “center point object”, and make copies to group with each shape. I believe that would work, but posting from my phone now so I can’t test it at this time. Moving the helper object to the back or setting transparency to 99% will hide it from view.
If you move your shapes around a lot, this may help (assuming that it actually works). If you just need it for the initial placement, it will be more cumbersome than just using align.
@keme, I just tested with a corner of a no-fill no-line rectangle (light yellow in the image) as “center point object” of the real shape. But the rectangle needs to exceed the dimension of the real shape in two sides, and its size must be a multiple of the resolution of the grid.
So it turns out that the snap point is not the corner at the center of the real shape, but the corners (light red) that lies outside the real shape. This way works well.
With snap, you would need to drag each shape separately. That is cumbersome.
In case you have a row of shapes, mark them together and align them “vertically centered” with the tool “Align objects”.
To distribute such row of shapes so, that the shapes centers are equal distributed, first position the first and last shape correctly. Then mark all shapes of that row together and then use “Horizontal Distribute Center” from the “Distribution” tool.
Analogous for a column of shapes.
To position a single shapes relative to its center, use the “Position and Size” dialog and set the reference point to center before entering the x- and y-coordinates.
Thanks for your help but the whole point of wanting to use snap is so I can add and change shapes at random in the grid and they automatically remain aligned in both dimensions. Having to realign and redistribute in both directions every time I change a shape would be very cumbersome.
Thanks everyone for your help.
It doesn’t look like Draw can do what I need (at least not easily).
I explored alternatives and Inkscape is more appropriate for my needs at this point.
If any developers are reading this, an option to have objects snap to the grid on their centre point would be useful.
Draw should let the user define an Anchor (master point) for any shape s.he wants to move —the centre of a circle, one corner or the centre of a rectangle or a triangle, etc. Then, when the object is selected and dragged around, the Anchor would snap to a point or line.