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Adding a hatch by picking an interior point


HOUCAD

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All hatches are attributes of objects, such as polygons. AutoCad has hatches as separate objects. You may well know how difficult AutoCad hatch objects can be to reshape after they are created.

There is a simple point click method to creating a polygon from other objects, if you want to trace a boundary. Select the bounding objects, then use the command Modify->Combine Into Surface. Then click the bucket cursor in the area you want the boundary traced.

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Hmmm, OK. It is a problem sometimes selecting all the bounding objects in a complex shape if it wasn't drawn as a polyline. So there is no way for the fill or hatch to automatically find the bounding objects like an AutoCAD hatch does?

AutoCAD does adjust the hatch if you stretch the bounding objects. Granted, it does not always work but a hatch can be redone in a second if it doesn't.

Sorry for the constant references to AutoCAD but I am just trying to find a common reference point from what I am used to coming from 15 years using AutoCAD and 10 of those years using ADT. It's a really good job though and it is a MAC office so I have to get used to VectorWorks. Sigh.

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I, too, have worked on AutoCad for over 15 years, and I still do at times. I've had my share of hatching problems with that program - remember version 13? The most recent AutoCad hatch problem I've had was a few months ago, when somebody put an associative hatch on an xref plan background in a drawing file (that is, a plan background was used as a source file). When the source xref plan was changed, the drawing file's associative hatch started a major corruption, because it could not locate the hatch boundaries (which were changed), and the drawing file could not open. This took a couple hours to sort out during a critical deadline. So I have no binding love for AutoCad's associative hatching.

I guess my argument is that sometimes learning to do old things a new way can be a great time saver. For example, VectorWorks can use an assigned hatch class to automatically hatch for you when drawing poly objects. Or you can hatch objects using the eyedropper tool from other hatched objects. This is what I like most about VectorWorks - lots of powerful hidden potential waiting to be discovered and used.

I hope this post #50 means that I am no longer a Greenhorn!

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  • 2 months later...

An easy way to fill a bounded space is to use the polygon tool's "outer boundary mode". Select polygon tool, change the default "vertice mode" to "outer boundary mode" (icon looks like a lasso). Now you can lasso a group of lines or other objects and VW creates a new closed polygon that you can fill with a hatch.

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...It is a problem sometimes selecting all the bounding objects in a complex shape if it wasn't drawn as a polyline. ...
You don't have to pick just the bounding objects. You can draw a selection window around everything in the area, or use Ctrl-A or the Select All pull-down command. The Combine Into Surface tool will only consider selected objects it they bound the pick point. Just deselect any objects you want it to ignore.

But in VW we tend to use surfaces instead of lines to create 2D geometry. That's not just because surfaces automatically come with a hatch or fill. It's also because surfaces were always very easy to create and edit in VW, and they let you control a whole bunch of lines as one object. Check out the Add & Clip Surface tools, and the many modes of the 2D Reshape tool.

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