Batten Down the Hatches!

This section outlines the steps you use to add hatching to a drawing with the Hatch Creation contextual Ribbon tab, as shown in Figure 15-2. You can use this information to get started quickly with hatching. When you need more information about any part of the process, jump to the relevant sections of “Pushing the Boundary (of) Hatch,” later in this chapter.

Figure 15-2: The Hatch Creation contextual Ribbon tab.

The following steps show you how to hatch an enclosed area by using the “pick points” method of selecting the hatch area:

1. Open a drawing containing geometry that forms fully closed boundaries, or draw some boundaries by using the drawing commands described in Chapters 8 and 9.

   The areas you want to hatch should be completely enclosed. The CIRCLE, POLYGON, and RECTANG commands, and the LINE and PLINE commands with the Close option, make great hatch boundaries (see Chapters 8 and 9 for details).

2. Start the HATCH command by typing H and pressing Enter. Alternatively, click the Hatch button on the Draw panel of the Ribbon's Home tab.

   The Hatch Creation contextual Ribbon tab (as seen in Figure 15-2) appears.

3. Select any predefined hatch pattern on the Pattern panel.

   Alternatively, you can click the Hatch Type button at the top left of the Properties panel and choose Custom or User Defined. If you choose User Defined, you don't need to choose a pattern. (You can also choose User from the end of the Pattern panel drop-down menu.) Custom patterns appear after the predefined patterns; if you don't have any custom patterns on your system, ZIGZAG will be the last predefined one listed, just before User.

4. Specify an Angle and Scale for the hatch pattern. (Or, if you chose User Defined in Step 3, specify Angle and Spacing.)

   See the section, “Getting it right: Hatch angle and scale,” later in this chapter, for more information.

5. Select hatch options as required.

   For this example, leave the Annotative button unselected. Try it the old-fashioned way first and then have a look at the “Hatching for the 21st century” section later in the chapter.

   Don't confuse Annotative with Associative, even though both are polysyllabic words that start with A and are right next to one another in the Hatch Creation tab's Options panel. Annotative hatch objects rescale themselves when you change the annotation scale in model space or in a viewport. Associative hatch objects (enabled by default) update to the new area when you change the hatch boundary.

   By default, when you select a number of closed areas and then press Enter, the hatched areas will be created as a single object; choose Create Separate Hatches on the Options slideout panel if you want to be able to modify each hatched area individually. Set the Draw Order drop-down list to specify whether the hatch objects are in front of or behind the hatch boundary or other drawing objects (see Figure 15-3).

6. Move the crosshairs over the area you want hatched.

   As you move the crosshairs over the drawing, the hatch pattern and other options you chose in the preceding steps are displayed over every closed area where the crosshairs pause. The following prompt appears at the command line:

   Pick internal point or [Select objects/seTtings]:

7. Pick a point inside the boundary of the area you want to hatch.

   AutoCAD analyzes the drawing and highlights the boundary that it finds.

8. Right-click anywhere in the drawing area and choose Enter from the menu to indicate that you're finished selecting points.

   AutoCAD hatches the area inside the boundary.

Figure 15-3: Hatch options for every occasion.

AutoCAD is still reluctant to hatch supposedly closed areas where even a speck of daylight gets through, but AutoCAD 2012 at least shows you where you need to fix a leaky boundary. The Hatch routine displays one or more red circles at gaps in the not-quite-enclosed area you want to hatch. Even if it won't fix the gaps, it does show you where you should fix them.