Questions about LayoutEditor usability and editing features
Svetoslav
Tuesday 19th August 2025
Hello,
I am currently evaluating LayoutEditor and I have some questions regarding its editing and usability features. I would greatly appreciate clarification on whether the following behaviors are configurable or if there are existing workflows to achieve them:
1. Orthogonal movement without Shift
• Is there a way to constrain object movement strictly to orthogonal directions (horizontal/vertical) without needing to hold the Shift key during the move operation?
2. Measurement line persistence
• When using the measurement tool, the measurement line disappears after selecting another element. Is there an option to keep the measurement line visible/persistent until it is explicitly removed?
3. Selection box + screen panning
• Can the selection box remain active while scrolling/moving the view, so that larger areas outside the initial screen can be selected?
4. Moving multiple cells while preserving connections
• When moving multiple cells that are connected by paths, is there a way to stretch those connections so that their endpoints remain fixed and the relative connectivity is preserved
5. Cell highlight behavior
• When hovering the cursor over a cell, not only the outer boundary of the cell is highlighted, but also all internal paths and shapes are outlined.
• Is there a way to change this behavior so that only the outer boundary of the cell is highlighted?
Jürgen LayoutEditorFull Tuesday 19th August 2025
to your question:
1) in the setup under shapes general you can limit the shape the 90deg edges. Also there are move_x and move_y mode only visible in the shortcut menu under Utilities/Misc/shortcuts. You can set customs shotcuts for it if required.
2) rules can made permanent by pressing the Ctr key when measuring. The mouse help will give more information.
3) you can zoom-in and out while selecting a box-area with the mouse wheel. As the zoom center always depends on the mouse position you can also pan by doing so.
4) Use the select/fine_select/point_select feature to do so and only partial selected the desired shapes.
5) The highlight behavior depends on the complexity of the references. Simple reference are completely highlighted while complex reference will get a highlighted background. This behavior can not be changed.
Svetoslav
Monday 25th August 2025
Thank you very much for your reply and the explanations! Most of the points are clear now, but I would like to clarify a few of them further:
- Regarding question 1 (orthogonal movement): I have noticed that the setting in Setup / Shapes / General (all angle / 45 / 90) only affects the drawing of new paths, but it does not affect the movement of existing objects.
- Additional question:
Is there a feature similar to snap to vertex that allows selecting a specific point (vertex) of a path and breaking/bending the path at that exact point?
Jürgen LayoutEditorFull Monday 25th August 2025
If you have a one corner selected rectangle and do a movement, it will always break the 90deg shape limitation even if the movement is 90deg limited. So it did not really make sense to limit such movement in the 90deg limit mode.
The insert polygon point mode will also work on path. So it can be used to bend a path segment.
Svetoslav
Thursday 28th August 2025
Hello,
Thank you again for your explanations. To avoid any misunderstandings, I have recorded a short video in the Virtuoso environment demonstrating the following:
- The Create/Edit Snap Mode: Orthogonal is activated.
- Moving an object (cell) in various directions
My original question remains: is there a way to enable a global orthogonal movement constraint for objects, so that they can only move strictly along X or Y axes without needing to hold the Shift key?
The video illustrates the current behavior
This is a link to Google drive where the video is available:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19ZbNXuZMQAa0oBCetxM6f1B7wm-BlhSc/view?usp=sharing
Jürgen LayoutEditorFull Friday 29th August 2025
Thanks for the video. Such a snap mode does not exist in the LayoutEditor. As mentioned before there are other ways to limit a movement in only x or y direction. However the LayoutEditor does not have a separate snapping mode for it.