How can I remove the automatic snapping from a org chart in Lucid?

Hi ​@stefanguarino 

Thanks for sharing the details — I completely understand how frustrating it can be when you're trying to customize your org chart beyond the default structure.

Lucidchart's Org Chart shape library is designed with built-in hierarchy logic, so it automatically snaps shapes into a clean tree layout. That works well for standard org charts, but further customizations may be required, based on your desired layout.

If the Group option is greyed out, it’s likely because the shapes are still linked to the Org Chart structure. Try using containers or groups to resolve this. Here’s how:

1. Copy the tiles you want to group and paste them outside the chart.

2. Now, select all the pasted shapes and use “Arrange > Group” to lock them together.

3. You can also draw a container shape (like a rectangle or swimlane) around the group to visually separate teams (e.g., Team 1, Team 2).

To turn Off Auto-Snapping and Alignment, you can disable Snap to Grid / Alignment Guides - here’s how to do this:

1. Click anywhere on the canvas (not on a shape).

2. Go to the View menu in the top toolbar.

3. Uncheck the following options (see screenshot below):

   • ✅ Snap to Grid

   • ✅ Snap to Guides

I hope this helps. 

I also want to move tiles around freely without them snapping back or auto-aligning under the tile above in an ORG CHART.

I followed the provided instructions to turn Off Auto-Snapping and Alignment disable Snap to Grid / Alignment Guides on an Org Chart

1. Click anywhere on the canvas (not on a shape).

2. Go to the View menu in the top toolbar.

3. Uncheck the following options (see screenshot below):

   • ✅ Snap to Grid

   • ✅ Snap to Guides

I noticed that they both were NOT selected when attempting to Uncheck them (they were already Unchecked).  I still cannot move the boxes around freely as they still snap back / auto align. 

Hi ​@Bert, thanks for adding to this thread!

Sorry for any confusion here. With grid and guide snapping settings, you can force objects to adhere to specific lines when you move objects around the canvas. Details on that can be found in here in this section of the Help Center article Adjust document and board settings. 

However, adjusting these settings will not change the behavior you mentioned seeing in org charts. Org chart employee shapes don’t behave the same as standard shapes in Lucid. Org charts are a unique shape type that have an auto-layout functionality, so the org chart shapes can’t be freely moved around the canvas, and they indeed will auto-snap back to their location as you’ve discovered. 

If you’d like to learn more about the options that are available to customize the layout and look of your org chart, I recommend these resources:

• Layout format and style section of the Help Center article, Create an org chart
• Org chart customization section of the Help Center article, Org charts: A guide from start to finish

Our Lucid template gallery may have a few org chart template options that don’t use this specific data-backed org chart shape library with the auto-layout functionality built in. One example is this Simple org chart template, which provides an example of how you can create an org chart in Lucid using the standard shapes. 

Let me know if you have any further questions here!