Snap and Grid

What is “Snap” and “Grid”?

Snap will cause mouse drags to jump to the nearest snap setting.
Snap can be set to multiple options: markers, region start/ends, Playhead, and the Grid. ( those are all enabled by default, but you can change them in Preferences->Editor->Snap )

Grid can be enabled, and it will draw lines at selected intervals; which can be musical, like 16th notes, or can be timecode based ( minutes and seconds ) . You can leave the Grid enabled, but snap disabled, if you just want to see the lines but not snap to them.

For example: if the Grid is set to “beats” and Snap-to-grid is enabled, then any operations such as split, paste, or range-select will happen exactly on a beat, according to the musical timeline and tempo.

Alternatively, you can leave “Snap” enabled ( so your mouse actions can snap to Markers, or region edges ) but disable the Grid.

!The grid consist of lines running vertically in the edit canvas. If you zoom too far out, you might see a coarser grid than you expect. Mixbus tries not to show “too many” or “too few” grid lines depending on the zoom level. You might find that items snap in-between the grid lines sometimes. That’s expected behavior. If you can’t see or snap to the grid you’d like to use, you may have to zoom in or out.

Snap Options:

General Snap Options:

• Snap Threshold (pixels) (default 25) : when you are within this distance of a snap-able location, the mouse will jump to the snap-able location.
• Approximate Grid/Ruler Granularity (pixels): in order for grid lines to appear, there must space between the grid lines. This preference sets the distance between grid lines.
• Show “snapped cursor”: when enabled, and you are using the Mouse as Edit Point, a blue line will appear where the “snap” is going to occur.
• Snap rubberband selection to grid: when you select a “box” with the grab tool, this determines whether the box edges will Snap, or not.
• Grid switches to alternate selection for Internal Edit tools: when you switch from a regular tool to an “internal editing” tool ( Draw or Edit ), the Grid will automatically switch modes. In the past, this was used to increase the Grid precision when drawing MIDI notes. With the current “Scalable Grid” implementation, this is no longer very useful so it is defaulted “off”.
• Grid mode selection may change ruler visibility: This option allows the user to select whether rulers automatically appear and disappear when changing Grid selections, as contrary to the next option below “Rulers automatically change to follow the Grid mode selection”. See the section Transport, Markers, and Rulers for a refresher of the terminology.
• Rulers automatically change to follow the Grid mode selection: If enabled, when you select a Grid, the appropriate ruler for that grid will appear.

!If the Grid setting seems to be changing arbitrarily, it’s probably because you are switching between Region-editing and Content-editing tools. You should disable the option “Grid switches to alternate selection for Internal Edit tools”

“When Snap is Enabled, Snap To”

It is possible to select multiple “Snap” options simultaneously.

• Playhead: When enabled, and the Edit Point is set to Mouse, then the mouse can snap to the Playhead location
• Markers: When enabled, Mouse Operations will snap to the nearest timeline location marker
• Region Sync Points: Mouse operations will snap to the nearest region Sync Points
• Region Start: Mouse drags will snap to the nearest region “start”
• Region End: Mouse drags will snap to the nearest region “end”
• Grid: Mouse operations will snap to the visible grid lines, which correspond to the selected grid unit.

*To use Region Starts/Ends/Syncs as “Snap to” resolutions, you must have either
• No tracks selected, which allows “Snap to” regions on any track.
• One or more tracks selected, which allows “Snap to” regions on all selected tracks.

Grid override:

To temporarily disable the Grid while dragging, hold “ALT” while dragging. ( this option can be changed in “Preferences->User Interaction”)

Relative Snap:

Sometimes you want a region to move in units of the grid ( eight-notes, quarter-notes, or whatever ), but you want it to maintain the same offset from the grid. In this case, hold “Shift+ALT” while dragging, and the region or note will retain it’s relative offset from the grid. ( this option can be changed in “Preferences->Editor->Modifiers” )

Grid Units:

No Grid	If this is selected, then no grid will be visible or effective.
Bar	Whole bars.
Beats (i.e. quarter notes)	Grid units consisting of various note-lengths (quarter-notes, sixteenths, triplets, etc)
Timecode	The timecode duration refers back to the session settings.
MinSec	Hours, Minutes, Seconds.
CD Frames	For CD mastering. The CD Frame is the smallest data entity in the Red book standard.

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