X-Y Copy Alignment after Copy and Paste on Block Diagram

[david.ball]

I use an electrical drawing package and on different pages of schematics it is nice to have copied components e.g. potential lines to be in the same position so when flicking through pages you can easily see the differences and it looks prettier.

In an event structure or case structure when I copy and paste an object from one case to another I would like to be able to also copy the position of the copied item. I like to be able to scroll through event structures and see any identical components in the same location. 

I propose that the X and Y keys on the keyboard be used to trigger this auto alignment so that after pasting, pressing Y will move the copied item to the same Y position and then X to move to X position.

[wiebe@CARYA]

You mean like the diagram grid:

Use CTRL+# (CTRL+SHIFT+3) to turn 'snap to grid' on.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

weibe: no, not like the diagram grid. The grid only aligns within 16 pixels of original location (or whatever you've set your grid size to). The paste happens at the location of last mouse click, which can be miles away from original copy location.

User david.ball is suggesting that ctrl+c copies diagram code and x,y coordinates into clipboard, and then ctrl+v+x would paste at the same x coordinate, ctrl+v+y would paste at the same y coordinate, and ctrl+v+x+y would paste at the same x and y coordinates.

The goal of the suggestion is good.  I can see problems with the particular solution. I'm also not sure that the x,y location is sufficiently well defined. It seems to only be valid when copying from within one structure to another frame of the same structure, otherwise the coordinate space may be totally wrong (between two VIs, for example, the BD origin could be way off the screen in one VI and dead in the middle of code for the other VI).

It's definitely a proposal worth thinking about.

[david.ball]

No I mean to automatically move the item that was copied to the X and Y co-ordinates that the copied item was also at. Snap to grid would still required manually moving and checking position compared to a previous event or sub-diagram.

[david.ball]

In addition to clarify I would not want the key combination to be CTRL+V+X+Y. 

I would stick with CTRL+V then after simply press X and Y to move the item.

Position could be relative to the boundary of a case structure boundary and the event structure boundary.

If anyone is familiar with Eplan electrical schematic software that is where I got the idea

[AristosQueue (NI)]

> In addition to clarify I would not want the key combination to be CTRL+V+X+Y.

> I would stick with CTRL+V then after simply press X and Y to move the item.

I thought of those as identical notations. I guess the difference is whether or not the control key has to still be held down?