hatches

[monkey]

why oh why are hatches so complicated to create, its unbelievable.

this could have been made so so simple, but no, they wanted to make it as hard as possible to understand.

all i want to do is make a block paving hatch which is 0.45m x 0.45m

the help guide is totally useless as well.

can anyone explain in the english to me once and for all.

thanks

[Jonathan Pickup]

if you not like hatches, use tiles, they are much easier to make.

[monkey]

cheers jonathan, they are much easier, but i still want to know how to use the hatches properly.

it seems to me that they could have made the interface a lot easier to use.

i consider myself fairly intelligent, but this tool infuriates me beyond belief.

i have watched people struggle and struggle with hatches and they usually accidentally get there in the end or give up.

even the example they give in the help menu of creating a brick makes no sense at all, and no explanation is given either.

i may just be missing something here, but i am self taught on VW so have to work things out for myself

[Stan Rostas]

Here is the hatch. Yes, the method and UI is not a very user friendly one.

You are setting positions of the dots on the screen. These can also be dragged around to get the look what you want then adjusted in the numeric fields. Yes, I know the Fields and the dots do not align in quantity as the Dash factor does not have a dot until you change the value from 1 as it sits under the Repeat dot. The repeat and the Dash factor work together as setting the length and direction of the line.

The offset is for how far this line iterates itself that you have created.

Start new hatch which gives you Level 1 or line 1

Leave the Start at L: 0 and A: 0

Set Repeat L:.45m and A: 0

Keep Dash Factor at 1

Set Offset L: .45m A: 90

Now you create Level-2 or line 2

all one has to do is change the Repeat and the Offset angles, the tricky part is you have to set them at something other than 0 or 90 as you can not have an offset angle and repeat angle be the same.

[Jonathan Pickup]

well, i have written manuals on making hatches, and all 2d graphics if that helps....

[monkey]

stan

thanks for that. i did try exactly what you did, but something must have gone wrong, because the hatch didnt work out to be .45m.

also the repeat and offset angles are a pain, i kept on getting the warning that i couldnt do that. makes no sense to me, but there we go.

i have always created hatches by just dragging them, but i now have the need to create accurate hatching. i will persist

thanks

worked it out, was set to page instead of world units.

why on earth would you want it set to page units??????

Edited October 5, 2012 by monkey

[Tamsin Slatter]

Page units are useful in a hatch if you always want it to print the same size, regardless of scale.

[monkey]

hmmmm, doesnt sound useful to me, but there you go.... im sure someone finds it useful.

i transferred everything from my old mac to my new one, and its seems like VW has decided to go mad. all my saved presets and preferences have reset themselves, and for some reason all of my plugins have gone, so in my tool pallet all i have are lots of red crosses...... may be why hatches reverted to page units and i didnt notice.

thanks for the help

[Greg Mix]

I am looking for new hatches for gravel, concrete and wood. Can anyone help me?

[Jonathan Pickup]

have you tried StoneCAD?

http://www.boralna.com/stonemasonryveneer/download-stonecad-stone.asp