[Tex/LaTex] Columns Environment Spacing

beamercolumnsspacing

I'm making a poster using beamerposter and I'm having some trouble with column spacing. I want to have a column that spans the entire width of the poster for my title, institution, etc. and then 3 columns below. This works fine. However, I want my columns to be aligned with the title column but not each be 1/3 the size of the page because I want some space between the columns.

I want my left column aligned with the left of the heading and my right column aligned with the right of the heading. My middle column should be in the middle. Here's a miminal example:

\documentclass[final]{beamer}

\mode<presentation> {
  \usetheme{Boadilla}
}

\usepackage[orientation=landscape, size=a0]{beamerposter}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}{}

\vfill

\begin{columns}
\begin{column}{\textwidth}
\begin{block}{\centering \vspace{10mm} \Huge{It's a Title}\\\huge{Author\\Institution}\vspace{10mm}}
\end{block}
\end{column}
\end{columns}

\begin{columns}

\begin{column}{0.31\textwidth}
  \begin{block}{\centering \vspace{3mm} \LARGE This is a block \vspace{3mm}}
    There's some text in it
  \end{block}
\end{column}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%                               MIDDLE COLUMN
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\begin{column}{0.31\textwidth}
  \begin{block}{\centering \vspace{3mm} \LARGE It's a middle block}
    And it also has text
  \end{block}
\end{column}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%                           RIGHT COLUMN
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\begin{column}{0.31\textwidth}
  \begin{block}{\centering \vspace{3mm} \LARGE A Cool Thing \vspace{3mm}}
    Text and stuff  
  \end{block}
\end{column}

\end{columns}

\vfill

\end{frame}

\end{document}

Here's what it looks like:

Centered but not properly aligned

I've also tried changing my title column to 0.93\textwidth (3*size_of_each_column) but that results in this where the title column is too small:

title is to small

How can I have the three columns below the title align with the title? I've tried inserting \hfill between them but that doesn't move them. I don't want each column to be 0.33\textwidth in size because that leaves no space between columns.

Best Answer

If you specify totalwidth of the columns, it seems to work:

\documentclass[final]{beamer}

\mode<presentation> {
  \usetheme{Boadilla}
}

\usepackage[orientation=landscape, size=a0]{beamerposter}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}{}

\vfill

\begin{columns}[totalwidth=\textwidth]
\begin{column}{\textwidth}
\begin{block}{\centering \vspace{10mm} \Huge{It's a Title}\\\huge{Author\\Institution}\vspace{10mm}}
\end{block}
\end{column}
\end{columns}

\begin{columns}[totalwidth=\textwidth]

\begin{column}{0.31\textwidth}
  \begin{block}{\centering \vspace{3mm} \LARGE This is a block \vspace{3mm}}
    There's some text in it
  \end{block}
\end{column}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%                               MIDDLE COLUMN
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\begin{column}{0.31\textwidth}
  \begin{block}{\centering \vspace{3mm} \LARGE It's a middle block}
    And it also has text
  \end{block}
\end{column}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%                           RIGHT COLUMN
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\begin{column}{0.31\textwidth}
  \begin{block}{\centering \vspace{3mm} \LARGE A Cool Thing \vspace{3mm}}
    Text and stuff  
  \end{block}
\end{column}

\end{columns}

\vfill

\end{frame}

\end{document}

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