Hatching Walls with an Arc

[Guy Rhodes]

Hello All:

I'm fairly new to CAD, using Vectorworks 11.0.1 on a G5 running OS 10.3.6. I'm having a problem hatching two walls in my drawing.

The walls that are giving me issues are fairly complex (the back of a theater with a curved wall), a curved surface and lots of angles / inner wall voids, etc.

Despite the complexity in this area of the drawing, I have one complete wall that is enclosed throughout its boundaries / intersections.

Since the wall was drawn with the line tool / arc tools, it is not an "object", and thusly, I can't use the hatch command to fill it in.

I've tried "composing" the lines and arcs of the wall (this worked for hatching several of my walls without arcs), but Vectorworks is taking the midpoint of the arc of one of the curved walls as a boundary for composing, and the entire arc is hatched as a result.

So, what to do? I'm POSITIVE that the wall segments are all touching, and if only VW had a "paint bucket" like I'm used to in Photoshop, I could just click the space between the lines, hatch, and be done (by the way, I did try the paint bucket "put down attributes" tool, but again, since the space between my lines isn't an object, it won't work).

Here's a look at the wall segment I'm having trouble with:

HELP!

[mike m oz]

Why are you using Lines to make up your 'walls' instead of Walls?

- If you use VectorWorks Walls you will be able to give them whatever fill you like.

- If you assign them to a particular class you will be able to change their appearance globally by changing the graphic attributes of the class.

To hatch your lines you will need to 'compose' the lines into a polygon. The more complicated the polygon the more likely this will be difficult. You can overcome this by making up a complex shape with several polygons with the matching edges made invisible (last option on the Polygon Reshape Tool). The only drawback to this is if you export to DWG the 'invisible' edges will become visible to the recipient.

You would really be better off using the Wall Tool.

[ 02-02-2005, 03:20 AM: Message edited by: mike m oz ]

[Arch]

I have tried a similar layout and I haven't found a problem! The only thing that can be wrong is that all the end points aren't touching! Try using the connect/combine tool with the 2nd preference checked on the top line (dual object connect) to join the walls. This will make a polygon of all the walls and hopefully fill them properly too!