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MEDUSA4 Tips and Tricks - Grids

You may prefer to create designs using grids instead of construction lines. Like construction lines, you can use grids as guides for your drawings. Grids are especially useful for creating schematics, such as P&IDs, because they make symbol spacing easy, and you have the choice of making grids active or inactive, displaying them, hiding them, or only showing grid points for visual clarity.

Grids Menu

The Grids menu on the pull-down menu bar provides tools for setting grid properties and display options. Although you can create up to ten grids for each sheet, you can only display one grid on your current sheet at a time. The current grid is always the grid whose name is displayed in the Grid Properties dialog.

Activating and Deactivating a Grid

You can activate and deactivate the current grid at any time. When a grid is active, whether or not it is displayed, probing a point with the free point tool will snap to the nearest grid point.

Activating a Grid
You can turn on the current grid by clicking on the Activate Grid option on the Grids menu. When a grid is active, all points that you create using the free probe specifier are placed on the nearest grid point to your cursor position. You need to deactivate the grid if you want to create free points between the grid lines.

Deactivating a Grid
You can turn off the current grid by clicking on the Deactivate Grid option on the Grids menu. When you turn off a grid, you can position points using the free probe specifier anywhere on the sheet.

Drawing and Hiding a Grid

Drawing the Current Grid
You can draw (i.e. display) the current grid by clicking on the Show Current Grid option on the Grids menu.

Hiding the Current Grid
You can hide the current grid by clicking on the Hide Current Grid option on the Grids menu.

Modifying a Grid

You can change any of the properties of an existing grid in the Grid Properties dialog. Here, you can create Cartesian or Polar Grids and, for either type

	Select the current grid from a list of named grids
	Modify grid line styles
	Determine X and Y grid origins and spacing
	Choose the interval between the grid lines displayed (e.g. display only every tenth grid line)
	Choose the extent of the grid (whether it covers the whole sheet or just displays at its borders)

Some property settings are specific to the type of grid selected:

Properties for Cartesian Grids
Cartesian grids are standard grids and are selected by default. In the Grid Properties dialog you can

	Create sub-grid increments for points (show smaller points at regular intervals)
	Create isometric grids, which automatically creates an X axis of 30 degrees and a Y axis of 60 degrees
	Create sheer grids, where you can set the angle of either X or Y

Properties for Polar Grids
Polar grids emanate outward from an easily identifiable single point, like a spider's web. In the Grid Properties dialog you can select the Polar Grid option and

	Set the radial increment and origin rotation
	Set the angle and number of sections