Any techniques/plugins to arrange and center objects in a hexagonal grid?

[Rabulias]

Using Paint.NET 5.0.13, and MadJik's wonderful Hexagonal Grid 4.1.0.40699.

 

I am trying to arrange objects centered within the hex grid quickly and easily without "just eyeballing it." Here is an example of what I mean:

With an array of 7 objects arranged like this, I can copy and paste them quickly and easily cover a larger area of the grid. I want them to be precisely positioned within each hexagon the same so I can overlap the copy and paste at times as I cover an area.

 

Bonus points if there is a way to do offset tiling in some way so that I could select an arbitrary area and fill it with copies of an object arranged in a hex grid pattern.

 

Thanks in advance for any help, advice, or suggestions!

[Red ochre]

Welcome to the forum @Rabulias

 

This is surprisingly tricky when using offset tiling... unfortunately hexagons don't fit nicely inside a rectangular 'brick' pattern.

 

You could add another hex grid layer (offset so corners of one layer are over the centres of the first layer) to use as a temporary guide to position your 7 objects.
(Using the arrow keys can move layers one pixel at a time.)
Good luck ... it is tricky ... if other users can think of a better method, please post.

 

I tried making a tile-able hexagon pattern but was few pixels out. 🙁 here

 

A hexagonal tiling plug-in would be ideal - but a challenge best left for those who have mastered the new plug-in system!

[Ego Eram Reputo]

Here's how I would attack this problem:

1. Place your tree or other object on it's own layer, separate from the hexagonal grid layer.
2. Roughly align the object to the centre of one hexagonal cell.
3. Activate the hex layer and select the cell you want to centre the object into
4. With the selection still active, switch to the tree layer and run one of the align plugins to align the tree to the selection
5. Repeat steps 1 to 5 one more time to fill an adjacent cell in the next column
6. Tile the tree layer sideways and vertically to fill the grid.

 

[IHaveNoName]

^ That sounds exactly what I was going to suggest and I played around with that idea last night but decided not to post as I found one minor(?) problem.

 

BTW you must use a transparent background for the hexagonal grid and tree elements

 

The problem was the hexagonal grid alignment; when copying and tiling the fine lines of the grid do not always match perfectly. Maybe it was the resolution/monitor I'm using but I found overlapping lines, particularly the diagonal ones, sometimes, had enough meat to appear thicker than the two or three pixel width the original Hexagonal Grid tool uses.

 

A solution would be to erase one of the overlapping lines but that does add considerably more work when multiplying the tiling.

 

The wider the hexagonal line width the less of a problem this is but, as shown in the original post, the OP does want to use fairly fine hexagon outlines.