How can I draw a "helper grid" across my page (or some part of my page) in 1 cm?

Questions
,
1

I’d like to have a light grid showing across my page (possibly also with numbers like ‘1 cm’, ‘2 cm’, ‘3 cm’, …) to help with laying out other things.

In other situations I’d like to have a grid showing just within another document element.

What is a simple way of doing this, either with built-in typst functions, or with a package?

2

The easiest way maybe this:

#set page(
  background: grid(columns: (1cm,) * 21, rows: (1cm,) * 30, stroke: 0.1mm),
)
#set page(background: context grid(
  columns: (1cm,) * calc.ceil(page.width.cm()),
  rows: (1cm,) * calc.ceil(page.height.cm()),
  stroke: 0.1mm
))

image
image739×1044 9.98 KB

Kind of related: Add support for inside/center/outside strokes (change stroke bounding box). Zero page margins issue · Issue #5741 · typst/typst · GitHub

Or this:

#let cm-grid = tiling(size: (1cm, 1cm), square(stroke: 0.1mm))
// #set page(fill: cm-grid)
#block(fill: cm-grid, lorem(70))

image
image648×163 32.6 KB

With tiling, it’s easy to apply to stuff other than page. Much more dynamic, but you won’t be able to place ordered labels.

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3

Thanks – I have realised that I probably have more use for the helper grid within an element and the cm-grid solution works well. For my own future reference, I coloured it a bit differently

#let cm-grid = tiling(size: (1cm, 1cm), square(
                      stroke: 0.5pt + blue.transparentize(90%)))

And then use

#block(fill: cm-grid, [
// the thing that I am currently trying to typeset
])
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