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Hatch question


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Andy, in general that's not a simple thing to do. For simple hatches it could be, but for more complex ones, you would have to calculate new values for each level in the hatch.

You mentioned you tried obvious things so I hope I don't insult you, but I'll mention it anyway....The quick solution is to use the Hatch command under the 'Tool' menu and you can specifiy the start point and rotation of any hatch. The down side is the hatch is converted to a group of lines and if you re-size your hatched object, you'd have to delete the hatch and re-apply it using the hatch command again, but that is the quickest way to deal with rotating a hatch.

[ 07-12-2004, 06:28 PM: Message edited by: tom kyler ]

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Thanks for the reply - I'm REALLY hard to insult. I was hoping for a quick way to change a bunch of objects that all have the same hatch as a fill. Seems like there should be a way to just rotate the whole hatch in the hatch editor but I guess not.

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Yes, Andy, there is a way. It'll sound complicated, but it's actually pretty easy, and quick once you get the hang of it. The main obstacle is the confusing terminology.

(Skip to ** if you already know how to use the hatch editor.)

When you edit a hatch pattern, all objects to which that pattern has already been applied by the Attribute palette change automatically. Hatches already created by the pull-down command won't be affected.

Select an object with that hatch as an attribute, pull down the list of hatches on the Attribute palette and select "Hatch...", and on the window that pops up that hatch will already be selected, so just click "Edit".

A hatch pattern consists of a number of dashed lines, called "Levels", and the levels are listed in the pull-down box called "Active". If you're trying to rotate a pattern 90 degrees, you may be talking about a pattern with only one "Level", or maybe just a few parallel Levels.

Each "Level" is defined by color & lineweight attributes, a Dash Factor (1.0 for a solid line), and three vectors. The linear distances of the vectors can be either "World", meaning to scale (for example in a brick or tile pattern), or "Page", meaning relative to print-out size (for example in a shading pattern). The angles are measured counter-clockwise from angle 0, which is to the right. And the whole hatch can be either background filled (any color) or not.

The 3 vectors are:

1. a Start Point some distance and angle from 0,0;

2. a "Repeat" distance and angle along which the line runs from that start point, after which it repeats ad infinitum in the same direction (the dash factor is a percentage of this "Repeat" distance, and the length of the dashes = Dash Factor x Repeat Length);

3. an Offset distance and angle, which identifies the starting point of the next in an infinite series of parallel lines just like the first.

**

To rotate a hatch 90 degrees, you usually just have to add 90 to the Repeat and Offset angles of each Level. The only trick to it is that the editor won't let you add 90 to one or the other, nor to do both at once. You have to add 45 to one, then 90 to the other, then another 45 to the first.

Some complicated hatches, such as a realistic lattice pattern or a concrete hatch, will also require altering the Start Points.

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