How to snap to world grid in Satisfactory

✓ At a glance

• You can snap to world grid in Satisfactory by holding down the left Ctrl key when placing structures in Build mode.
• Snapping to world grid will align your structures to the world’s cardinal directions on any point on the planet.

While designing a small factory is not an issue early on, as it grows proper organisation and compartmentalising becomes important. Building on a grid makes planning and expanding much easier. To help with that, Satisfactory features a world grid that you can snap to your construction projects. Here’s how to do it.

Snap to world grid, explained

You have to hold the left Ctrl key on your keyboard while in build mode (Q by default) to snap to the world grid in Satisfactory. This will change the build hologram from free-form mode to snap to world grid. In essence, that will align the foundations and structures to the world’s cardinal directions, South, West, North, and East. Otherwise, the game will try to snap the hologram to any adjacent buildings.

Don’t neglect free-form placement where necessary. However, snapping to world grid makes building sprawling factories much easier to align.

What is snap to world grid used for?

While building free-form is easy to do in the beginning, you will soon find problems with alignment as your factory expands and you move to new locations. Using the world grid is beneficial to avoid this issue. For example, you could place a Foundation structure that’s snapped to world grid. Then, build out your factory around it and it will always snap perfectly. In addition, when you have to move to a different location to build extensions, snapping them to the world grid will allow them to flawlessly sync with your main compound.

If you’re worried about elevations and verticality, don’t forget that you can build ramps to connect with your other structures. Using the world grid to line them up will take away the guesswork involved and make everything line up perfectly. Starting to use this feature early in your builds will make it much easier to expand in the long run, but it’s fine to have some free-form structures if you have an aesthetic plan in mind.