Figma auto-layout vs doing it by hand for dashboards: my take

I spent last week rebuilding a client dashboard two ways once with strict auto-layout groups and once just nudging things pixel by pixel. The auto-layout version took me about 3 hours but resized perfectly for mobile, while the manual one was faster to build but fell apart when I needed to adjust margins. Has anyone else found that auto-layout saves you time on complex layouts or do you still prefer the control of hand-placing everything?

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emma_young1d ago

Skip the hand-placing nonsense for dashboards. I built one for a fitness tracker and auto-layout saved me from a total meltdown when the client wanted to add three new metric cards. Manual would've meant redoing the whole grid, auto-layout just took ten seconds to adjust the padding. It's not perfect for every little thing but for anything with repeating elements it's the ONLY way to go.