Using Hatch Patterns in Your Drawings

Using Hatch Patterns in Your Drawings
To help communicate your ideas to others, you’ll want to add graphic elements that represent types
of materials, special regions, or textures. AutoCAD provides hatch patterns for quickly placing a texture
over an area of your drawing. In this section, you’ll add a hatch pattern to the floor of the studio
apartment unit, thereby instantly enhancing the appearance of one drawing. In the process, you’ll
learn how to quickly update all the units in the overall floor plan to reflect the changes in the unit.

Placing a Hatch Pattern in a Specific Area
It’s always a good idea to provide a separate layer for hatch patterns. By doing so, you can turn
them off if you need to. For example, a floor plan might display the floor paving pattern in one
drawing, while in another drawing it was turned off so it won’t distract from other information.
In the following exercises, you’ll set up a layer for a hatch pattern representing floor tile and then
add that pattern to your drawing. This will give you the opportunity to learn the different methods
of creating and controlling hatch patterns.
Follow these steps to set up the layer:
1. Open the 07a-unit.dwg file. Metric users should open 07a-unit-metric.dwg. These files
are similar to the Unit drawing you created in earlier chapters and are used to create the
overall plan in the 07b-plan and 07b-plan-metric files. Remember that you also still have
the 07b-plan or 07b-plan-metric file open.
2. Zoom in to the bathroom and kitchen area.
3. Create a new layer called Flr-pat.
4. Make Flr-pat the current layer.
Now that you’ve set up the layer for the hatch pattern, you can place the pattern in the drawing:
WARNING If you’re using LT, you won’t see the Gradient tab in the Hatch And Gradient dialog
box shown in step 1 of the next exercise.
1. Click the Hatch tool on the Draw toolbar, or type H↵. Hatch is also located in the Draw dropdown
menu. The Hatch And Gradient dialog box opens.



2. In the Type drop-down list box, select User-Defined. The User-Defined option lets you
define a simple crosshatch pattern by specifying the line spacing of the hatch and whether
it’s a single- or double-hatch pattern. The Angle and Spacing input boxes become available,
so you can enter values.
3. Double-click the Spacing text box near the bottom, and enter 6 (metric users should enter 15).
This tells AutoCAD you want the hatch’s line spacing to be 6 inches or 15 cm. Leave the
Angle value at 0 because you want the pattern to be aligned with the bathroom.
4. Click the Double check box (on the left side of the dialog box). This tells AutoCAD that you
want the hatch pattern to run both vertically and horizontally. Also notice that the Swatch
box displays a sample of your hatch pattern.
5. Click the Add: Pick Points button in the upper-right corner of the dialog box. The dialog box
momentarily closes, enabling you to pick a point inside the area you want hatched.
6. Click a point anywhere inside the bathroom floor area, below the toilet. Notice that a highlighted
outline appears in the bathroom. This is the boundary AutoCAD has selected to
enclose the hatch pattern. It outlines everything, including the door swing arc.
TIP If you have text in the hatch boundary, AutoCAD will avoid hatching over it, unless the Ignore
option is selected in the Island Display Style options of the Advanced Hatch settings. See the section
“Using Additional Hatch Features,” later in this chapter, for more on the Ignore setting.
7. Press ↵ to return to the Hatch And Gradient dialog box.
8. Click the Preview button in the lower-left corner of the dialog box. The hatch pattern
appears everywhere on the floor except where the door swing occurs. You also see
this prompt:
Pick or press Esc to return to dialog or :
9. Press Esc or the spacebar to return to the dialog box.
10. Click the Add: Pick Points button again, pick a point inside the door swing, and press ↵.
11. Click Preview again. The hatch pattern now covers the entire floor area.
12. Right-click to place the hatch pattern in the drawing.
The Hatch And Gradient dialog box lets you first define the boundary in which you want to
place a hatch pattern. You do this by clicking a location inside the boundary area, as in step 6.
AutoCAD finds the boundary for you. Many options give you control over how a hatch boundary
is selected. For details, see the section “Understanding the Boundary Hatch Options,” later in
this chapter.
TIP Say you want to add a hatch pattern that you’ve previously inserted in another part of the drawing.
You might think that you have to guess at its scale and rotation angle. But with the Inherit Properties
option in the Hatch And Gradient dialog box, you can select a previously inserted hatch
pattern as a prototype for the current hatch pattern. However, this feature doesn’t work with
exploded hatch patterns.