Boundary Retention

Boundary Retention
The Boundary Hatch command can also create an outline of the hatch area by using one of two
objects: 2D regions, which are like 2D planes; or polyline outlines. Boundary Hatch creates such a
polyline boundary temporarily, to establish the hatch area. These boundaries are automatically
removed after the hatch pattern is inserted. If you want to retain the boundaries in the drawing,
make sure the Retain Boundaries check box is selected. Retaining the boundary can be useful if you
know you’ll be hatching the area more than once or if you’re hatching a fairly complex area.
TIP Retaining a hatch boundary is useful if you want to know the hatched area’s dimensions in
square inches or feet, because you can find the area of a closed polyline by using the List command.
See Chapter 2 for more on the List command.
TIP The Boundary command creates a polyline outline or region in a selected area. It works much
like the Boundary Hatch command but doesn’t add a hatch pattern.

Boundary Set Options
The Boundary Hatch feature is view dependent; that is, it locates boundaries based on what is visible
in the current view. If the current view contains a lot of graphic data, AutoCAD can have difficulty
finding a boundary or can be slow in finding a boundary. If you run into this problem, or if you want
to single out a specific object for a point selection boundary, you can further limit the area that
AutoCAD uses to locate hatch boundaries by using the Boundary Set options:
New (Select New Boundary Set) Lets you select the objects from which you want AutoCAD
to determine the hatch boundary, instead of searching the entire view. The screen clears and lets
you select objects. This option discards previous boundary sets. It’s useful for hatching areas in
a drawing that contain many objects that you don’t want to include in the hatch boundary.
Current Viewport Tells you that AutoCAD will use the current view to determine the hatch
boundary. After you select a set of objects by using the New button, you also see Existing Set as
an option in this drop-down list. You can then use this drop-down list to choose the entire view
or the objects you select for the hatch boundary.
The Boundary Set options are designed to give you more control over the way a point selection
boundary is created. These options have no effect when you use the Add: Select Objects button to
select specific objects for the hatch boundary.

Gap Tolerance
This group lets you hatch an area that isn’t completely enclosed. The Gap Tolerance value sets the
maximum gap size in an area you want to hatch. You can use a value from 0 to 5000.

Inherit Options
This group controls the hatch origin when the Inherit Properties option is used to create new hatch
patterns. Select Use Current Origin when you want to use the current default hatch origin. Select
Use Source Hatch Origin when you want to use the origin from the inherited hatch pattern.