Way of making point A to point B measurements within a layout

On 10/26/2010 9:02 AM, johnshelley wrote:

It would be handy to have a tool, by using two mouse clicks, to measure and display the distance between two points within a layout.  The points could snap to the snap grid.  Protel has this tool under the "reports" menu drop down.  I miss it now that I use EAGLE.

 

many requests for this seemingly obvious tool.

The EAGLE way to do this is to use the mark command to set the origin at

one point and then just move the mouse to the other point and read off

the value.

On 10/26/10 22:41, Gary Gofstein wrote:

On 10/26/2010 9:02 AM, johnshelley wrote:

>> It would be handy to have a tool, by using two mouse clicks, to

>> measure and display the distance between two points within a layout.

>> The points could snap to the snap grid.  Protel has this tool under

>> the "reports" menu drop down.  I miss it now that I use EAGLE.

>>

many requests for this seemingly obvious tool.

 

The EAGLE way to do this is to use the mark command to set the origin at

one point and then just move the mouse to the other point and read off

the value.

And in what way does this not do what John wants?

Klaus Schmidinger

--

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Klaus Schmidinger                       Phone: +49-8635-6989-10

CadSoft Computer GmbH                   Fax:   +49-8635-6989-40

Pleidolfweg 15                          Email:   kls@cadsoft.de

D-84568 Pleiskirchen, Germany           URL:     www.cadsoft.de

_______________________________________________________________

On 10/27/2010 12:38 AM, Klaus Schmidinger wrote:

On 10/26/10 22:41, Gary Gofstein wrote:

>> On 10/26/2010 9:02 AM, johnshelley wrote:

>>> It would be handy to have a tool, by using two mouse clicks, to

>>> measure and display the distance between two points within a layout.

>>> The points could snap to the snap grid.  Protel has this tool under

>>> the "reports" menu drop down.  I miss it now that I use EAGLE.

>>>

>> many requests for this seemingly obvious tool.

>>

>> The EAGLE way to do this is to use the mark command to set the origin at

>> one point and then just move the mouse to the other point and read off

>> the value.

 

And in what way does this not do what John wants?

 

Klaus Schmidinger

It does what he needs, never said it doesn't...and as for what he

wants, that should be clear from his question.

It is different from most user's expectations of how the tool should

work. That's why they sometimes can't figure it out. In my opinion, it

is also clumsy to use for checking dimensions, for the reasons others

have said.

When there's lots of mechanical specs, and these days that's very

common, it's not so much fun. The best solution in these cases, with

EAGLE, is often entering coordinates directly, but did they get snapped

to the grid? I wouldn't know, you, the designers, would know EAGLE's

behaviour in this case, but not me.

And, you need to do a lot checking and rechecking of dimensions because

it's amazing how things get moved in a layout without your awareness.

And this is when the mark method can get clumsy. Maybe I just don't know

how to use it, but how easy is it to forget to turn off the grid and

make a measurement that seems correct but isn't, or seems incorrect yet

is? I think very easy.

And in my opinion, any ruler tool snapping to the grid is probably not

something good here, snapping to edges and centers would be better.

So, Mark works fine for this. But is it the best way?

On 10/27/2010 12:38 AM, Klaus Schmidinger wrote:

On 10/26/10 22:41, Gary Gofstein wrote:

>> On 10/26/2010 9:02 AM, johnshelley wrote:

>>> It would be handy to have a tool, by using two mouse clicks, to

>>> measure and display the distance between two points within a layout.

>>> The points could snap to the snap grid.  Protel has this tool under

>>> the "reports" menu drop down.  I miss it now that I use EAGLE.

>>>

>> many requests for this seemingly obvious tool.

>>

>> The EAGLE way to do this is to use the mark command to set the origin at

>> one point and then just move the mouse to the other point and read off

>> the value.

 

And in what way does this not do what John wants?

 

Klaus Schmidinger

It does what he needs, never said it doesn't...and as for what he

wants, that should be clear from his question.

It is different from most user's expectations of how the tool should

work. That's why they sometimes can't figure it out. In my opinion, it

is also clumsy to use for checking dimensions, for the reasons others

have said.

When there's lots of mechanical specs, and these days that's very

common, it's not so much fun. The best solution in these cases, with

EAGLE, is often entering coordinates directly, but did they get snapped

to the grid? I wouldn't know, you, the designers, would know EAGLE's

behaviour in this case, but not me.

And, you need to do a lot checking and rechecking of dimensions because

it's amazing how things get moved in a layout without your awareness.

And this is when the mark method can get clumsy. Maybe I just don't know

how to use it, but how easy is it to forget to turn off the grid and

make a measurement that seems correct but isn't, or seems incorrect yet

is? I think very easy.

And in my opinion, any ruler tool snapping to the grid is probably not

something good here, snapping to edges and centers would be better.

So, Mark works fine for this. But is it the best way?