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How to move component so that the pad aligns to the pad of another component (like Altium does)

johnbbsr

When moving a component, is there a way to make the pad line up with the component pad it is connecting to ?

For example, with reference to the screen capture below...

I want to route a straight track (net +1V2D) between the capacitor (on the left) and the processor pin (on the right)

Therefore I want to move the capacitor (vertically down) so that the pad aligns with the processor pin.

I have a grid setup and use the capacitor pad as the pickup point, but using the grid to do this sort of thing is difficult and restrictive.

For example, the pitch and/or offset might be different on the x or y axis and different components have different pitches etc 

There should be an option when moving components which automatically overrides the grid and 'snaps' the component so that the pads align

I've come from using Altium which had this feature, but I'm finding that Orcad seems to have a lot of these useful features missing (as well as being counter intuitive and restrictive)

Out of the 5 PCB tools I've used, Orcad is the only tool where you cannot cross probe from the PCB back to schematic (which is a ridiculous feature to miss out).  I would expect a free tool to have limited features, but even Design Spark PCB can cross probe in both directions !

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  • in reply to steve

    Dynamic Alignment still does not seem to align the pads that need to be connected

    The capacitor at the bottom left has a kink in the track because the pads are not aligned, this is what I am trying to resolve by using an alignment feature

    The capacitor at the top left does not align to the +1V2D pad that it needs to be connected to, it only shows guidelines to the capacitor below.

    Also, there are no rats nests shown (because the nets are power - that capacitor is being used as a decoupling capacitor)

    I set the 'No Rat' to on in the Net General Properties in the Constrains Manager, but it made no difference

  • in reply to johnbbsr

    You may need to adjust the placement grid to get "exact" alignment (Setup - Grids - Non-Etch) but check your preferences as I said earlier to remove component origin. For the ratsnest, if a no rat property is On you won't see rats for that net. If you don't have this property then you will see a rat BUT if you also have a Voltage Property assigned the rat will be displayed as a square with a cross in the middle (GND in your screenshot). If you remove the Voltage property you will see point to point rats. 

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