Understanding the Boundary Hatch Options

Understanding the Boundary Hatch Options
The Hatch And Gradient dialog box offers many other options that you didn’t explore in the previous
exercises. For example, instead of selecting the area to be hatched by clicking a point, you can
select the objects that bound the area you want to hatch by clicking the Add: Select Objects button.
You can use Add: Select Objects to add boundaries to existing hatch patterns as well.
The Swatch box just below the Pattern drop-down list opens the Hatch Pattern Palette dialog
box, which lets you select a predefined hatch pattern from a graphic window.
The Hatch Pattern Palette dialog box has several tabs that further divide the types of hatch
patterns into four categories: ANSI, ISO, Other Predefined, and Custom. The Custom tab is empty
until you create your own set of custom hatch patterns. See Chapter 26 for details on how to create
custom hatch patterns.
Other options in the right column of the Hatch And Gradient dialog box include Remove
Boundaries, Recreate Boundaries, View Selections, Associative, Create Separate Hatches, Draw
Order, and Inherit Properties:
Remove Boundaries Lets you remove a bounded area, or island, in the area to be hatched. An
example is the toilet seat in the bathroom. This option is available only when you select a hatch
area by using the Add: Pick Points option and an island has been detected.
Recreate Boundaries Draws a region or polyline around the current hatch pattern. When this
option is selected, the dialog box temporarily closes. You’re then prompted to choose between
a region or a polyline and to specify whether to reassociate the pattern with the re-created
boundary. (See the Associative option discussed in a moment.)
View Selections Temporarily closes the dialog box and then highlights the objects that have
been selected as the hatch boundary by AutoCAD.
Annotative Allows the hatch pattern to adjust to different scale views of your drawing. With
this option turned on, a hatch pattern’s size or spacing adjusts to the annotation scale of a viewport
Layout or Model Space view. See Chapter 4 for more on annotation scale.
Associative Allows the hatch pattern to adjust to changes in its boundary. With this option
turned on, any changes to the associated boundary of a hatch pattern cause the hatch pattern to
flow with the changes in the boundary.
Create Separate Hatches Creates separate and distinct hatches if you select several enclosed
areas while selecting hatch areas. With this option off, separate hatch areas behave as a single
hatch pattern.
Draw Order Allows you to specify whether the hatch pattern appears on top of or underneath
its boundary. This is useful when the boundary is of a different color or shade and must read
clearly or when the hatch pattern must cover the boundary.
Inherit Properties Lets you select a hatch pattern from an existing one in the drawing. This is
helpful when you want to apply a hatch pattern that is already used, but you don’t know its
name or its scale, rotation, or other properties.

Annotative Hatch Patterns
In Chapter 4, you learned about a new feature in AutoCAD 2008 called annotation scale. With this feature, you
can assign several scales to certain types of objects, and AutoCAD displays the object to the proper scale of the
drawing. Hatches can take advantage of this feature to allow hatch patterns to adjust their spacing or pattern
size to the scale of your drawing. The Annotative option in the Options group of the Hatch and Gradient dialog
box turns on the annotation scale feature for hatch patterns. Once a hatch pattern has this feature turned on,
you can set up the drawing scales that you want to apply to the hatch pattern using the same methods
described for blocks in Chapter 4.