Creating a grid of related circles

[BatteriesInc]

I'd like to create an A5 size field of circles, all spaced 5mm apart.

 

Is there any clever, fast way of doing this so that all circles are spaced accurately, and they maybe can be changed later?  I've had grid snapping enabled, but that works only on one circle, and as soon as I do a power duplicate I don't get snapping because I'm dragging a whole line of them, and cursor key nudging doesn't seem to get added to the motion for the next power duplicate action.

 

I've also looked at using symbols for this because it would allow me to change the whole page of objects at once, but the sheer volume of them leads to many encounters with the macOS spinning ball so that was possibly stretching things a bit.

 

Advise welcome.

[gdenby]

1st. A5 dimensions in mm are 210 x 148. I don't think there can ever be a bunch of circles 5mm apart that will evenly fill the layout. Maybe in some small fraction of a mm.

 

But, try this. Create the document and go into the grid and axis manager dialogue. Show grid, and then select "basic." Make the grid unit 5mm, only 1 division. 

 

With snapping to grid turned on, draw a circle to the size you would like. Use the duplicate command, and slide the circle horiz or vert. just to the next grid position, 5mm. Continue w. the duplicate command till the circles fill the column or row. Select all, and do the same in the other axis.

 

After that, the circles can all be grouped, and scaled proportionally.

 

If you are trying to make huge numbers of very small circles, the spinning ball is probably showing that there is a huge amount of processing going on trying to define the curves way down into maybe millionth of divisions.