Question about Hatch scaling

When I try to create a Pattern hatch, I can never be sure what scaling it needs. Scale "1" it generally is much too big; scale "0.01" is better.

But all these I've found thru trial-and-error; isn't there a way (like with Text Height) to know what you'll get without tweaking values?

Thanks.

Go with Annotative Hatching. It's preset to work in you favor no matter what. All you have to do is find the right scale that looks good and Drag/Drop it to a Tool Palette so it retains the properties.

Go with Annotative Hatching. It's preset to work in you favor no matter what. All you have to do is find the right scale that looks good and Drag/Drop it to a Tool Palette so it retains the properties.

I tried Annotative out with mixed results. Keeping the same Hatch scale for each try, some patterns looked good while some were 10x their normal size (which I don't even know). Why was that? (If the scale had some relation with the drawing units, I could know what they'll look like.)

It sounds like the drawings are in different units, which is why the hatch displays differently in those drawings.

If they were drawn on different unit based templates, the hatch and linetypes will correspond to the base dwg units.

The MEASUREMENT command is the one which determines whether the hatch definitions used are the Imperial or Metric ones, it also sets the Linetypes.

It sounds like the drawings are in different units, which is why the hatch displays differently in those drawings.

All the hatches I applied were in the same drawing, at the same scale.

Here is what I did:

New drawing - No template, Imperial; created a 2x2" Rectangle; ran Hatch command with Scale = 1; tried with the patterns: Angle, Ansi31 through Ansi38- everything was fine. Starting with AR-B816, (with the same scale, of course) I practically get a solid white color, as with subsequent AR- patterns.

What happened?

I think that the best way to understand what is going on is to look at the pattern definition files, and is a good chance to see how the definition is made up.

If you open ACAD.PAT in a text editor, the patterns ANSI31 to ANSI38 all have offsets below 1.

If you look at the pattern AR-B816, you see that the offsets are 8.

The patterns have not been defined consistently. The AR- patterns maybe are meant to represent real life dimensions, and the ANSI patterns just fill up the space.

I think that the best way to understand what is going on is to look at the pattern definition files

I'll do that, thanks.

I gather that most Autocad users in this situation try different scales until a good one is found - would that be correct?

Yes, very succinctly stated.

As counter intuitive and frustrating as you find it.