Aligning items: putting symbols back on the grid
Wires in QElectroTech run straight when the terminals at both ends line up, and terminals line up when their symbols sit on the grid. A symbol that is even a few pixels off the grid gives a bent or stepped wire.
Symbols leave the grid more easily than you might think:
- Alt+arrow moves a selection by 1 pixel (see Mouse modifiers, §6), so a few presses leave it between grid points.
- Ctrl while dragging places freely, ignoring the grid.
- Projects made with older versions, or with a different grid setting, may already contain symbols off the grid.
In the example projects that ship with QElectroTech, 508 of 3,678 placed symbols (14 %) are off the grid.
Until now nothing put them back: you had to drag each symbol by eye until it happened to land on a grid point. This page covers the commands that do it for you. They were proposed in discussion #1069 and are built one pull request at a time.
Menu names are given in French, as QElectroTech shows them until the translations are updated, with an English gloss in italics.
| Command | What it does | Pull request |
|---|---|---|
| Snap to grid | puts the selected items back on the grid | #1073 |
| Align, distribute, straighten wires | line symbols up, space them evenly, straighten the wires between them | planned in discussion #1069, not built yet |
Snap to grid
Status: pending. This section describes PR #1073, not yet merged. Nothing here works until that lands — check the PR before trying any of this against your own build. This section will drop this notice once it does.
Using it
- Select the items to fix. Ctrl+A selects everything on the folio, which is the quickest way to tidy a whole page.
- Choose Édition ▸ Aligner ▸ Aligner sur la grille (Edit ▸ Align ▸ Snap to grid). The same command is in the right-click menu of the selection, and in command search (Ctrl+Shift+M, type "grille").
Each selected item moves to the nearest grid point, and the status bar says what happened:
| Status bar | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 3 objet(s) remis sur la grille | 3 items were off the grid and have been moved |
| La sélection est déjà sur la grille | nothing needed moving; no undo step is added |
| (1 objet(s) verrouillé(s) laissé(s) en place) | added when locked items were in the selection; they were not moved |
One undo step (Ctrl+Z) puts every item back where it was.
Which items move, and to which grid
| Item | Snaps to |
|---|---|
| Symbols | the folio grid, by the symbol's origin point: exactly where dragging it would have dropped it |
| Pictures | the folio grid |
| Free texts | the text grid, the finer step set under Affichage ▸ Grille des textes (View ▸ Text grid), so a text you placed on a finer step is not pulled onto the coarser folio grid |
| Shapes (lines, rectangles, polygons) | not moved: a shape is several points, and no single one is the obvious one to snap |
| Locked items | not moved |
| Wires | follow their symbols, as they do when you drag |
Items already on the grid stay exactly where they are.
Things worth knowing
- Half a step rounds up. A symbol exactly half a grid step off (5 px on the default 10 px grid) goes to the next grid point, so "back on the grid" is not always "back where it was before the nudge".
- Holding Ctrl makes no difference. Unlike dragging, where Ctrl means "ignore the grid", this command always snaps to the grid, so it still works if you give it a shortcut that includes Ctrl.
- No default shortcut. You can assign one under Configurer QElectroTech ▸ Raccourcis (Settings ▸ Shortcuts); the command is listed in the Éditeur de schémas group.
- The grid is the folio's own grid. If you changed the grid size in the preferences, symbols snap to that size.
- A symbol whose terminals are off the grid inside the symbol itself still gives bent wires after snapping. That is a problem in the symbol, not its position; fix it in the element editor.
See also
- Grid size and element size — the folio grid, and why symbols are drawn to it
- Mouse modifiers — what Ctrl, Shift and Alt change while you drag or nudge
- Grouping items — moving several items as one
- Drawing faster — command search and other commands at the cursor
Getting Started
🌐 Languages — English · Français · Deutsch
Guides
Conductors — wire properties, what feeds which export, and cables
Printing and exporting — paper, PDF, images, and what each path does differently
Linking elements — master, slave, terminal
PLC modules — I/O tables and linking a wire to a specific point
Using the element editor — drawing tools, saving, checks
Grid size and element size — why symbols aren't all the same scale
Preferences reference — what each settings page does
Keyboard-only control — mouseless QET, and what still needs a mouse
Mouse modifiers — what Shift, Ctrl and Alt change while you drag
Aligning items — snap symbols back to the grid (pending)
Grouping items — select, move and copy several items as one (pending)
Finding your place on a folio — go to a cell like B13 or 4-B7, keep the headers in sight, show the cell limits
Drawing faster — place without dragging, the S shortcut bar, command search, gestures
Managing collections — folders, writability, building your own shortlist
Templates — reusable multi-element blocks, and why clicking one does nothing
Search & Replace — bulk property changes
Building a nomenclature query — the BOM/summary table builder
Linking wires across pages — folio reports
Variables & formulas — %f, %{label}, sequences
Auto-numbering — schemes, sequences, freezing
Terminal strips — strips, levels, bridges
Title block templates — the .titleblock format
Importing EPLAN parts (.edz) — EPLAN Data Portal
DXF import & export — two unrelated features, one format; command-line export and layers (pending)
The project database — the in-memory SQLite cache
Development
Automating QET — CLI, XML formats, external tools
CLI Reference — command line usage
JavaScript Scripting — --run, geometry editing, undo
MCP server — let an AI assistant read, verify and edit projects
Vision — proposal, under discussion
