For making a recipe for an item like a sword or a shovel you need to make 3 recipes: a recipe when the sword is at left, one when it's in the center and one when it's at right.
When you want to make a recipe for an axe or a hoe you need a lot of recipes.
This causes a lot of similar mod elements and JEI recipe duplicates.
So, can you add an option for recipes to make them "smarter"?
Current state:
Image from ticket: https://mcreator.net/tracker/issue/44244
Issue comments
Just for the convenience, I am linking a related forum topic here: https://mcreator.net/forum/43324/multiple-ways-recipe
You can bypass this by going to code of your recipe and edit it I will use your example to explain how to fix this:
so lets say that Seed = 1 and Dirt = 2
so recipe look like this: "1 ", "2 ", " " = Grass
but if you do it like this: "1", "2" = Grass Will work as you want
So now what's going on here? So there is one empty column that we don't need so we can remove and if we do remove this empty column we will be able to place seed on top row or mid row as long as dirt is below seed so from now it will recognize and use only 2 rows in Work bench and about changing "1 " to "1" this will allow you to place your items in any slot from left to right but keep in mind that this crafting still uses original pattern "which is seed and dirt below" but by doing this changes you will be able to place this items in any crafting slot and they will still output your item
Also here is example from my mod, its crafting of twigs that uses custom planks but this recipe modifications allows them to be arranged it the same pattern as vanilla wood planks in crafting table.
recipe = {"3", "6", '3', Ingredient.fromStacks
Raol, thank you for opening a ticket for this. I will work on recipe optimizator and hopefully release it in one of the next updates.