Working with the grid and auto-alignment

Learn about the grid that keeps your items aligned, and what to do if things are out of place or misaligned.

In Whimsical Boards & Projects, there’s a grid which keeps your items aligned.

You can see it represented with dots on the background at zoom levels of 100% or more, but even if it’s not visible (because you’re zoomed out further) items will still be aligned to it:

Note: In Wireframes the grid is not visible, but still affects the positioning and alignment of objects. In boards the spacing is 12px apart and in wireframes it's 1px apart.

Item snapping

When you move an item, it will move along the lines of the grid by default, and snap to the nearest points. Connectors also follow grid lines:

All of an item’s edges will align with the grid unless the item has been resized to a fractional value. This happens in certain cases, like with images to preserve the correct aspect ratio:

Auto-alignment

Items will automatically align with other nearby items, as well as the grid. You’ll see guidelines showing when an item you’re moving is aligned with the center or edges of another item:

However, if one item is not aligned with the grid (like in situations mentioned above), other nearby items may still align with it, instead of the grid, because auto-alignment with other items takes precedence:

To avoid this press the ‘command’ or ‘ctrl’ key while dragging, and items will only align with the grid, not other items:

Snap to grid

To easily align an item (or many) with the grid, select them and choose “Snap to grid”:

Ignoring the grid

Alternatively, if you’d like to pick a very specific location for an item, press the backtick key (`) to ignore auto-alignment and the grid: