AUTOCAD HATCHING

Hatches can be patterns or solid fills and are used to identify different parts of a building. In the construction industry, hatches are most commonly used to describe materials in elevations and sections.

Certain hatch patterns are considered standard patterns for specific materials. The image below shows a wall detail. The double pattern indicates brickwork, the single line hatching indicates blockwork and the floor pattern indicates concrete.

Creating Hatches

Hatch is created from the Ribbon Home tab > Draw panel, by clicking the Hatch tool.

Command line: To start the Hatch tool from the command line, type “H” and press [Enter].

The Ribbon Hatch Creation contextual tab will show.

Note: A contextual Ribbon panel is one that will show when you have a specific tool selected. In this case, the Hatch tool is active so, the Hatch Creation tab is added to the end of all the Ribbon tabs.

Boundaries

The Boundaries panel from the Ribbon Hatch Creation tab controls how the area to be hatched is selected.

There are two different options for identifying areas to hatch, the Pick Points method and the Select Boundary Objects method.

The Pick Points method allows a point to be clicked on the screen, AutoCAD will then attempt to find objects that enclose an area.

The Select Boundary Objects allows a number of objects to be selected. If the selected objects form a closed area, AutoCAD will hatch that area. Once a number of objects have been selected, the Remove Boundary Objects button becomes active and can be used to remove objects from the selection.

If an existing hatch is no longer enclosed by boundary objects, the Recreate Boundary tool can be used to recreate the boundary.

Pattern

The Pattern panel of the Ribbon Hatch Creation tab controls the pattern that will be used to create a hatch.

Clicking the Hatch Pattern button will show the available hatch patterns.

Properties

The Properties panel of the Ribbon Hatch Creation tab controls the properties of the pattern created.

Allows the selection between Solid, Gradient, Patterns and User-defined hatch patterns.

Controls the colour of the hatch pattern created.

Allows a background fill to be added to hatch patterns. This works in similar way to hatching a shape that has a solid fill. If the Gradient hatch option is selected, this drop-down becomes the second colour of the gradient.

Controls the opacity of a shape as a percentage, where 0% is opaque, 100% is completely transparent.

Controls the angle in which hatching lines are created.

Adjusts the scale of the shapes and spacing in hatch patterns.

Origin

The origin panel of the Hatch Creation ribbon controls the origin point of a hatch.

To set the origin, click the Set Origin button and choose the origin point where the hatch would be set out from. This can be especially useful for some hatch patterns such as block and brickwork which need to line up with the shape being hatched.

Options

The Options panel of the Ribbon Hatch Creation tab controls Associative Boundaries, Annotative Scale and Match Properties.

The Associative Boundary option sets the Hatch to remain associated with its boundary. With this option selected the hatch is automatically updated if its boundary objects are modified.

Close

The Close panel of the Ribbon Hatch Creation tab closes the tab and shows the normal AutoCAD ribbon tabs. If a hatch boundary has already been selected the hatch object will be created as the tool is closed.

Editing Hatches

After a hatch pattern has been created, it can be easily modified. Select a hatch pattern to automatically display the Ribbon Hatch Editor tab.

The Ribbon Hatch Editor contextual tab allows changes to be made to an existing hatch which are reflected instantly on the selected object(s).

Draw Order

AutoCAD has tools to control how overlapping objects are displayed. By default overlapping objects are displayed in the order that they are created with the newest objects displayed above older ones. In certain cases these newly created objects need to be sent behind other objects to reveal them.

Draw Order can be controlled by the Ribbon Home tab > Modify panel by expanding the Modify panel and expanding the Draw Order drop-down menu.

Bring to Front

Bring to Front will bring the selected object(s) above all others in the drawing.

To bring an object to the front, click the Bring to Front button and select the object(s), then press [Enter].

Send to Back

Send to Back will send the selected object(s) below all others in the drawing.

To send an object to the back, click the Send to Back button and select the object(s), then press [Enter].

Bring Text to Front

Bring Text to Front will automatically bring all text objects above all other objects in the drawing. This is useful when text is obscured by recently created hatches.

Bring Dimension to Front

Bring Dimension to Front will automatically bring all dimensions above all other objects in the drawing. This is useful when Dimension objects are obscured by recently created hatches.

Send Hatches to Back

Send Hatches to Back will automatically send all hatches below all other objects in the drawing. This is useful when recently created hatch patterns obscure other objects in the drawing.