Alignment grids for multimonitor and Helios

[Hunter_5E]

Made these quite a while back and just rediscovered them on an old HDD. I've found them quite handy so posting them here in case anyone else might like them.

 

They are basically grid overlays to use with Helios. Either put a grid into a blank Helios profile and use it to position viewports or put it into a full Helios profile as the main background image and use it to help align Helios elements.

 

I made 3 different sizes to cater for pretty much any monitor setup - each in several colours.

 

1. 5940 x 1080

2. 8000 x 8000

3. 10000 x 5000

 

You'll just need to crop them to suit your overall monitor size for your setup and you're good to go. I thought using the "Tiled" option would display them correctly in Helios without cropping but unfortunately not. Easy to crop them though.

 

You can even use these with Helios to align pretty much anything you want on your multimonitors, not just DCS stuff.

Alignment Grids.rar

[Hunter_5E]

An explanation of how to use the grids for people less familiar with Helios and multimonitor.

 

Example 1. Two monitors of 1920 x 1080, one below the other - total res 1920 x 2160.

For the top monitor, crop a grid to have 0,0 (x,y) top left and 1920,1080 bottom right. Save it as a new filename. (.png file)

For the bottom monitor, crop a grid to have 0,1080 top left and 1920,2160 bottom right. Save it as a new filename. (.png file)

 

Example 2. Two monitors of 1920 x 1080, side by side - total res 3840 x 1080.

For the left monitor, crop a grid to have 0,0 top left and 1920,1080 bottom right. Save it as a new filename. (.png file)

For the right monitor, crop a grid to have 1920,0 top left and 3840,1080 bottom right. Save it as new filename. (.png file)

 

Same procedure applies to any other monitor setup - crop out the correct section of grid to match the coordinates of each of your monitors and save each as a new .png filename.

 

** If you don't have a graphics editing program that handles .png files and keeps transparency you can try "Gimp" which is free and has a decent crop tool. Not the best but useable. If anyone knows of a better free tool for cropping .png's accurately please post it here. **

 

To make the grids appear on top of your Helios panels, use an "Empty Panel" from the Toolbox "Panels" on the left in Helios Editor. Drag it onto your desired monitor and move it hard up to the top left corner. Rename it to "Grid Green" or whatever in the "Properties" tab and type in the width and height of your monitor in the size fields so it fills the whole monitor.

 

Select the appropriate grid section as background image for the panel and make sure the panel is at the top of the list in the "Layers" tab. (Select it in the Layers tab and use the up arrow tool at the top left in Editor to move it up)

 

You can make your grid panel hidden and place a button to toggle it on and off like any other panel. Or you can just delete the grid panel from your profile once you're finished with it. Up to you. Screenshots below showing how to make hidden panel and toggle button if you don't already know how.