Batt Insulation Hatch

[MattHamby]

Hello everyone!

I have enjoyed using the forum and the fact that everyone is so helpful! It's a real pleasure.

I have a hatch pattern that I am trying to create. It is a batt insulation hatch. I have been using a block that I craeted, insert to the scale of the opening (if inserting into a 2 x 4 stud wall the scale is 3.5). Well, I got this hair-brained idea that a hatch pattern would be nicer to use, because once at the top of the wall, at weird angles, etc. the block has to be exploded and trimed, whereas a hatch pattern just fills the area selected.

I read up on creating hatch patterns, and started the one I wanted - with the arcs as a 32 sided polygon. I believe I have all of the lines in at the proper angles and start poionts and lengths. The offsets are all that I have left to figure out (I have all of the "y" values set to 1 - I was trying to test it out and see what I needed to do next - doesn't show up on the screen). I have decided to pause on this for the rest of the day and the weekend. I though that some of you would like the oportunity to help out with this. I know that some of you have a lot more experience with it than I do, and somebody may have a pattern that does this.

Anyway, here are the dwg and the pat (saved as txt so that it could be loaded to the forum - just change the txt to pat) files for your review!

Thanks,

Matt Hamby

[MattHamby]

I have had a chance to look a little closer at a batt hatch pattern that I found on the internet, it has helped a little. I am a little unclear as to what the "space" number refers to (the last number in each line). What exactly is it and what does it represent?

My first line would be (words in () are not in the actual PAT file - just for your reference):

275.625 (angle),0 (x-origin),0.5 (y-origin),-0.49759236 (x-offset),0.04900857 (y-offset),0.04900857 (length or dash), ??????(space)

I have included a pic file of how I came up with the number numbers for the x and y offsets. my understanding is that the y-offset is a parallell offset to the line being offset, and the x-offset is then a liniar offset in the direction of the line. The Magenta is the original pattern, the blue is a copy of the original to get the correct offsets, the yellow and green are the current lines being measured. These are lines not circles, there are a total of 50 lines in the original pattern.

thanks,

Matt Hamby

[MattHamby]

OK, I have studied a few other hatches and not all of them include the "space" number. I keep getting an error message with some tests I have done, don't know why yet, but I will figure it out!

[A1DWG]

How about a series of parallel lines in the Batting linetype? I know its not what you are looking for, but it might be the simple answer for the same result.

I'm sure I've seen posts on the insulation / batting pattern elsewhere on this forum.

[MattHamby]

Yeah, there are some hatches out there, they work, just not the way I want. The line type sucks on many levels, the worst is the scaling issue to get it to fit in the area needed, then if you change the scale of the dwg (which we do often here because of using the same drawing multiple times).

Once I figure it out, I will upload the code to this thread for all to use!

[A1DWG]

Yeah, there are some hatches out there, they work, just not the way I want. The line type sucks on many levels, the worst is the scaling issue to get it to fit in the area needed, then if you change the scale of the dwg (which we do often here because of using the same drawing multiple times).

Once I figure it out, I will upload the code to this thread for all to use!

Just for clarifiaction, what is it you are looking for, and what do the hatches do or dont do?

[MattHamby]

I have found one that works, it just doesn't look as good as the one I am trying to create, you can tell it is drawn from lines, and it is not symetrical like the one I have shown above. outside of that it works close to what I want. I have included the file in this reply of the one I found. Once you download it change it from .txt to .pat.

Once you are ready to try it in AutoCAD, you type in the scale factor (which will be the width of the area to fill - 3.5 for a 2x4 stud).

Thanks,

Matt Hamby

[MattHamby]

HUGHA - Man that is awsome - works just the way I wanted and lookes great! Any body that want's a great Batt Hatch this is it!

Thanks again!

[ctt]

somebody please give me step by step instructions on how to do this. i cant figure it out.

thanks

[MattHamby]

downlaod the hatch, put it in the support folder where the other hatches are. open autocad and draw an object (maybe a 3.5" wide by 3' tall rectangle). go to the hatch command, when it comes up there is a section in the top lefthand area called "type and pattern". there are some dropdown menus here; type, pattern, swatch and custom pattern. select the one beside of "type", selct "custom". now "custom pattern" is available, select the "..." button to the right of that dropdown menu. You should now get another window that shows you the custom patterns available, select smootherbatt.pat. now you should see the swatch of batt insulation. Now just below this is the "angle and scale" area. the most important one here is the "scale" selection. if you have a 3 1/2" stud that you want to put the hatch into (suggestion above), the scale should be 3.5. now make sure the "hatch origin" is set to the lower left - this will change according to your need. select "add: pick points" select inside the rectangle you created earlier and hit the "enter" key. you should see a nice batt hatch!

note: I have noticed the the scaling is slightly off - you may see parts of the next column of hatch - I have not niticed it when it is plotted - I tweek the scale factor by 1/100ths until they are gone from the screen.

Thanks again for the help with this hatch!

Be good, Matt

[ctt]

Mate, you are a champion!!!!

Thank you very much!!!

[Ashley Line]

I am using 2009 LT and i cannot for the life of me get this hatch to become smooth like the first insulation picture?!

Can anyone provide me with an idiots guide to installation please?!


Many thanks

[MattHamby]

OK, you have it installed and using it correct? If so, how does it look when printed? If it looks fine while printed then it may be a display issue. I hope someone here knows more about 2009 Lt.

I am glad that several people are looking at this hatch!

[kindy52]

Having a hard time finding where the hatches are in the support folder.

[digitalart]

You can use batt insulation Linetype
Try that!!! it's easy than hatch

[kindy52]

Man you dug up an old one! hehe, I have a great dinamic block I'm using for bat ins now. Thanks for the response though. I'm just not to partial to that linetype.

[ReMark]

It's difficult to understand what all the fuss is about over a hatch pattern for batt insulation. Now if we were talking about a hatch pattern for oak veneer, herringbone flooring, or Arabic mosaic I could understand but it's just batt insulation guys.:lol:

[kindy52]

It's difficult to understand what all the fuss is about over a hatch pattern for batt insulation. Now if we were talking about a hatch pattern for oak veneer, herringbone flooring, or Arabic mosaic I could understand but it's just batt insulation guys.:lol:


Good point, at the time of the original post I was a bit overwelmed, managing my position and doing all of the drafting so I was interested in every time saving technique I could find. Now thank god we hired someone for those responsibilities. :D

[ReMark]

There have to a dozen batt insulation hatch files floating around out there in AutoCADland. I can understand one or two variations but anything beyond that seems like a waste of time and effort. Most viewers of the drawings the hatch pattern is used on will barely notice what pattern is used and rely more on the description of the insulation required. Just makes me laugh. No offense intended.

If we were drawing this detail on the board, by hand, in ink on mylar, would we be that particular about it? We should concentrate more on what's important than on how batt insulation looks.

[kindy52]

No offense taken :)

[MattHamby]

Ah, but the small details make the difference in a “so-so” drawing and a drawing that looks like a work of art. When drawing details that are at 3” = 1’-0”, poor batt insulation can make a detail look like a 3-year-old drew it. At small scales the line type works great due to the edges being hid in the line thickness, not so at the size I draw in. And yes, those of us who take pleasure in our work do care what our drawings look like, even when we were board drafting, that is why I am even more particular about how my AutoCAD details should look - because it can become much faster than when we were using pencil/ pen and paper. Our details should appear better than those days, we should be more meticulous, and do a better job - using the better tools and creating useful tools as we go.

It is amazing that those of you who will take the time to ridicule this post for something you think is not worth your time to bother with. Why not just move on and let those of us who find tis post useful and worth our time to use it how we see fit.

[ReMark]

Be my guest.

Next time you talk with a client ask them what they think about the batt insulation. Tell us what their response was.

My intent was not to ridicule your work. Attention to detail is a positive trait.

[MattHamby]

Put the 2 beside each other - see which one you would go with. Now that it is made into a tool - it works faster than the line type. So, argument that it is a time waster is gone and it is in fact cheaper to use what's the problem? Your argument falls. Sure there was some time involved in getting it set up, however, this was done in a time of no production work, and now who ever wants it can have it with no time involved so where does it impact the client in a negative way?

There is an old saying - works great - "If you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all."

[martinoxx]

I have found one that works, it just doesn't look as good as the one I am trying to create, you can tell it is drawn from lines, and it is not symetrical like the one I have shown above. outside of that it works close to what I want. I have included the file in this reply of the one I found. Once you download it change it from .txt to .pat.

Once you are ready to try it in AutoCAD, you type in the scale factor (which will be the width of the area to fill - 3.5 for a 2x4 stud).

Thanks,

Matt Hamby

Many thx for this hatch pattern...it looks very good...much better than batting line

[MattHamby]

thanks again to HUGHA!

[marc067]

Matt, dont sweat too much on some posts. Perhaps you are a perfectionist, but it is not a fault at all, and you are very generous of your work. There is fields where the esthetics of drawing isn't relevant, but architecture folks are usually not like that. There is a huge value in beautiful drawings when it comes to graphic comunication.

We are very grateful.
Marc

[MattHamby]

Thanks!

I hope you enjoy!

I work for an Engineering Firm in Greensboro, NC, we hold the esthetics of our drawings very high, we try to meet our own self imposed standards - and jobs are randomly audited to verify look, text, scaling, layer use, blocks used, hatching etc... are consistent with those standards. These are all important to send out a quality product as well as to allow many different CAD Tech’s to work on one job and it have a consistent look.

Thanks again!

Matt

[BIGAL]

My five cents worth went down a different track startpt endpt width draw a pline that is batting shape plus lots of others once you work out how to draw a pline with curves. also zig zag etc. Nice thing is you can trim etc Only disadvantage is not available for curves but could be solved mathmatically was not worth effort at time.

[MattHamby]

interesting, did you draw circles then tangent lins and convert them to plines, or is there a way to draw a pline segment as an arc - different than the spline command?

[SLW210]

MPEDIT should turn your arcs into PLINES.

[MattHamby]

OK, that is basically the same comand as PEDIT, except it uses the option for multiple selection without having to make that selection, nice to know! I will edit my alias' to use that command in leau of the PEDIT.

Now, my understanding of what he said was that he could draw circles (arcs) while in the PLINE command - while drawing straight lines - not drwing the separate entities then converting them to plines, I would like to learn how to do this, it sounds fascinating. Please explain your process - I could see other uses for it!

Thanks,

Matt Hamby

[SLW210]

The way I would do that would be to use the Polygon command and select 1024 for number of sides, this will give you a curve of many straight lines. You could also do this just drawing many very short plines around an arc/circle (use Polar Array to make this quicker.

MPEDIT gives the option of a Fuzz Distance while joining, that way the lines do not have to touch end point to end point.

[MattHamby]

pedit and mpedit are the same command - with the exception the mpedit automatically selects multiple items, where as in pedit the "m" has to be entered before you start selecting. also, arcs can be turned into plines without drawing the multiple segments, however, the only problem with that is sometimes thos joints can look funky due to how AutoCAD handles the intersections of sharp angles

Again, Thanks for the tips!

[BIGAL]

To matthamby you draw plines from first princples as one continous pline, you can draw a line then continue the pline with an arc then draw a line and so forth

cut this out of master lisp so not sure if it will work but shows how to do it


(setq insul_ht (getint "\nEnter Insulation ht mm :<90> "))
(if (= insul_ht nil)
(setq insul_ht 90)
)

(setq p1 (getpoint "\n1st point: "))
(setq p9 (getpoint P1 "\nend point : "))
(setq ang1 (angle p1 p9))
(setq p1 (polar p1 ang1 45))

(setq N (fix (/ (distance p1 p9) (* 90.0 (/ insul_ht 90.0)) )))
(setq d1 (/ insul_ht 2.0))
(setq p2 (polar p1 (+ 1.5708 ang1) d1))
(command "pLINE" p2 "w" 0.0 0.0 "a")
(setq m 1)
(while (<= m N)
(setq p3 (polar p2 ang1 d1))
(setq p5 (polar p3 ang1 insul_ht))
(setq p6 (polar p5 ang1 d1 ))
; now put pts 3,4,5,6
(command "ce" p3 "a" "-180" "ce" p5 "a" "180")
; parallel lines now drawn
(setq m (+ 2 m))
(setq p2 p6)
)

(command "")

[MattHamby]

Oh, duh!

Started command and payed attention to the line, got it - I usually pay attention to those, that's how I lean about certain commands, just never occurred to me to look at the pline command for any "extras".

Thanks!

[buildman]

Hello everyone!

Anyway, here are the dwg and the pat (saved as txt so that it could be loaded to the forum - just change the txt to pat) files for your review!

Thanks,

Matt Hamby

Hey Matt or anyone;

How do I convert the .txt file to a .pat file? This is probably going to be very simple but I'm new and learning Autocad.

Thanks very much

James

[ReMark]

There is no conversion. Just change the file extension from txt to pat. In Windows Explorer right-click on file name then select the Rename option.

[buildman]

There is no conversion. Just change the file extension from txt to pat. In Windows Explorer right-click on file name then select the Rename option.

Tried that and it didn't work, I'll give it another go.

Thanks

James

[danellis]

At the risk of wanting to teach you how to suck eggs, have you made sure that your Windows is set to show the extensions of known file types (or rather not to hide them!).

dJE

[ReMark]

How to show or hide file name extensions.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Show-or-hide-file-name-extensions

[Mack062]

I draw all my drawings in model space 1-1. Full size and then scale the layouts in paperspace to suit. I have never scaled drawings in model space. Will this hatch pattern work using 1 - 1?

[BIGAL]

Again using a pline you dont have any problems with height v's fixed patterning in a hatch, the pline lisp asks what height is the batting and draws it to suit, its coded around a normal height solution to start with if the batting was super sized the a different batt.lsp would be used to still give the correct artistic look, like Remark how good do you want it to look ?

[Bill Tillman]

Hey that's pretty cool. There are some very nice LISP programs available to do batt insulation hatching. Do some searches for this at Cadalyst.com's website and you'll find some good ones there.

[Manila Wolf]

The attached "BattInsulation" hatch pattern at the bottom of this post is quite a good one.
Best to set the hatch start point at Bottom Left, Bottom right, Top left or Top right, then play with the scale to suit.

Looks like this: -

31997


Personally, I still prefer to use a lisp for adding the Insulation pattern. The best lisp in my opinion can be found here: - http://autodesk.lithium.com/t5/Visual-LISP-AutoLISP-and-General/Insulation-Batt-representation-in-Polyline-form/td-p/2458785/page/2

Nice feature is that you can follow arcs and circles with this.

Some features (Pic by the lisp author): -

31996

[slara]

This is great, but why does it not work as a model hatch? Any ideas???

[molasses]

It does work as a model space hatch (I'm assuming that's what you meant) but the scale is weird. A hatch scale of .055 results in a 5.5" thick batt. Make the hatch scale too small or too big and it appears as a solid.

[Yanis]

How can I see the tutorial????:x

[ReMark]

What tutorial are you referring to?