Do a Job · Everyday · 3 min
Set things out with a grid and a margin line (guides)
A faint grid and a dashed margin line over the sheet, to keep things lined up. Aids on the screen only, never part of the drawing.
Guides are aids for setting things out, like the guides in Photoshop. They’re drawn over the sheet on your screen and are not part of the drawing: they aren’t stored, exported or printed, and no measurement knows they are there. They are off until you ask.
The grid
- Turn it on from View, Show the grid, or in Settings, Appearance.
- On a sheet with a scale its spacing is real distance (a 1 m grid on a 1:100 plan). On one without, it’s on the paper, in millimetres.
- Automatic spacing picks round numbers and changes them as you zoom, so it’s never a wall of lines. A fixed spacing is thinned (every 5th, then every 10th) when you zoom out far enough that it would be, and isn’t drawn at all when even that would be too fine.
- Choose lines or dots, and whether every 5th or 10th line is a little stronger, so there’s something to count from.
The margin line
A dashed line a set distance in from the edge of the paper (5 to 50 mm, in Settings), for keeping things inside a border. It follows the sheet if you turn or trim it.
Snapping, only if you want it
Snap to the grid and margin line (Settings, Appearance) draws a point you place to a grid point or the margin line, but only to one that’s shown, and only when nothing of the drawing's own (an end, an edge) is nearer. The Snap switch on the status bar still turns every snap off. Off, the guides are only to look at.