As far as I know, snapping only works when you're dragging with the mouse. So, I would first create the circle, and then use the mouse to drag it until it snaps to the desired location, when there will be a tiny message saying 'Bounding box midpoint to grid intersection'. Once you've done that, Inkscape has very good tools for things like lining up text with objects and with other text.
Does that work for you?
- Robert


From: Robert Nickels <ranickels@gmail.com>
Sent: November 3, 2023 17:16
To: W. Robert J. Funnell, Prof. <robert.funnell@mcgill.ca>; inkscape-user@lists.inkscape.org <inkscape-user@lists.inkscape.org>
Subject: Re: [Inkscape-user] Right tool for the job?
 
On 11/3/2023 2:04 PM, W. Robert J. Funnell, Prof. wrote:
If I understand correctly, you can do what you want if you make sure that Bounding boxes > Centers is selected in the Snapping menu.

I appreciate that suggestion, Robert.   It sounds like the solution- but I'm unable to make it work the way I need it to.   Here's a link to an image that shows a blow-up of two parts of my screen to show what I mean:

https://i.imgur.com/9KSlySL.png

In the upper right is my Snap menu.   The boxes that are enabled from top to bottom are Enable Snapping,  Snap boundary boxes, and Snapping centers of boundary boxes.    I then grabbed the circle tool and created a circle of .25" diameter which works fine.  But when I enter the X and Y coordinates for the circle, it is snapped to the position shown,  with the lower left-hand corner aligned at location (2", 1"),  not the center.   Regardless of the size of circle this is what  I always get, same with squares so I presume it's true for any object.

When I unselect centers and select Snap boundary box corners (3rd button down) - it works exactly the same as when I try to select centers.

Could you or someone please try this and let me know if it works for you or if I'm missing something?   Otherwise it looks to me that "snap centers" just doesn't do what I think it should.

Thanks,

Bob