AutoCAD For Dummies, 17th Edition

Chapter 15

Down the Hatch!

IN THIS CHAPTER

Adding hatch patterns to drawings

Applying annotative hatch patterns

Choosing hatch boundaries

Using predefined and user-defined hatch patterns

Editing hatches

If you need to fill in closed areas of drawings with special patterns of lines (crosshatches, or simply hatches) or solid fills, then this is your chapter. If you were hoping to hatch a plot or plot a hatch, see Chapter 16. If you want to hatch an egg, look at Raising Chickens For Dummies, by Kimberly Willis and Robert T. Ludlow (Wiley).

A hatch in AutoCAD is a separate object that fills a space; has an appearance dictated by the hatch pattern assigned to it; and is associated by default with the objects that bound the space, such as lines, polylines, and arcs. If you move or stretch the boundaries, AutoCAD normally updates the hatches to fill the resized area.

Creating a Hatch

Drafters often use hatches to represent the type of material that makes up an object, such as insulation, metal, or concrete. In other cases, hatches helps emphasize or clarify the extent of a particular element in the drawing — for example, showing the location of walls in a building plan or highlighting a swampy area on a map so that you know where to avoid building the road. Figure 15-1 shows an example of hatches in a structural detail. In mechanical design, it’s used to show the cut faces of cross sections.

FIGURE 15-1: A big batch o’ hatch.

This section gives you a jump-start on the basic process ...