Hatch not working

[silk]

I want to fill a boundary with certain pattern. I chose dots for it, picked points etc and then I have no idea what to do. Hatch is visible in model and on paper but when I press print preview or just print the pattern is gone. All other hatches are there but not dots. I have tried to change scale, lines, annotative/associative buttons and all that stuff and then I ran out of ideas. Help?

[Jack_O'neill]

Check to see if the layer you are putting your hatch on is set to print. You mentioned changing the scale, I assume you meant the scale in the "hatch edit" dialog box. If not, try that.

Otherwise, if you have access to a different printer, try it there and see if it will print. May be that your printer just can't do it. "Sand" is very similar to "dots", you might try that.

[silk]

Yes, I meant the scale in hatch edit. Unfortunately I don't have a variety of printers to choose from but I don't think changing one would help either. AutoCAD is the one acting weird. For some reason dots in other boundaries are visible but not where they're supposed to be. I just tried to add different patterns but they're acting the same. I'll try to copy my drawing to another file or redraw and see what happens.

 

EDIT: redrawing or using new file doesn't help.

Edited January 23, 2011 by silk

[Jack_O'neill]

Yes, I meant the scale in hatch edit. Unfortunately I don't have a variety of printers to choose from but I don't think changing one would help either. AutoCAD is the one acting weird. For some reason dots in other boundaries are visible but not where they're supposed to be. I just tried to add different patterns but they're acting the same. I'll try to copy my drawing to another file or redraw and see what happens.

 

EDIT: redrawing or using new file doesn't help.

 

Please try to be as accurate as possible when describing your problem. In your first post you said simply that it was not printing, now you tell me it actually is printing but just not where you wanted it. That is a very large difference, and is caused by a very different problem.

 

If I understand correctly, your hatch is "leaking" out into other parts of your drawing. This can be caused by several things, most common of which is that there is a gap between the objects that form the boundary for the hatch. Try drawing a closed polyline around the area you wish to hatch. Also make sure that there are no dimensions, leaders, lines or other objects overlapping the area. I've noticed in 2010 that the hatch will sometimes use these objects to "escape".

 

Another thing you might try is not hatching too many places at once. AutoCAD's biggest weakness, in all the years I have used it is it's inability to hatch properly. It's better now, but they still don't have it fixed.

[silk]

Well, I try to explain it again then. I hope it makes sense somehow.

 

I said that hatch disappears in certain boundary. I printed it because I wanted to see if it was just an on-screen problem or dots are actually vanished.

Imagine that I have drawn a circle, triangle and rectangle. Now I use hatch and fill them all with dots. Pattern is visible in all shapes - now I press print preview (or print) and rectangle looks empty again. It's not leaking, it simply isn't there. There can't be gaps between lines otherwise I'd get an error message. I just doesn't believe that my printer is so smart to delete one pattern in one specific area multiple times in a row.

[Jack_O'neill]

Well, I try to explain it again then. I hope it makes sense somehow.

 

I said that hatch disappears in certain boundary. I printed it because I wanted to see if it was just an on-screen problem or dots are actually vanished.

Imagine that I have drawn a circle, triangle and rectangle. Now I use hatch and fill them all with dots. Pattern is visible in all shapes - now I press print preview (or print) and rectangle looks empty again. It's not leaking, it simply isn't there. There can't be gaps between lines otherwise I'd get an error message. I just doesn't believe that my printer is so smart to delete one pattern in one specific area multiple times in a row.

 

You will get an error message if there is a gap provided the object you are trying to hatch is not contained inside another closed object. If it is, the hatch will spill out into the enclosed area. In the image below, the object on the left will generate the error message. The one on the right will not. It will allow the hatch to fill the rectangle.

 

In your first post you said: "Hatch is visible in model and on paper but when I press print preview or just print the pattern is gone. All other hatches are there but not dots."

 

This statement led me to believe that perhaps your printer didn't have sufficient resolution to print the dots. It has nothing to do with the printer being "smart" as you put it, and everything to do with whether it can physically print an object as small as the dot in that pattern. Some of the less expensive inkjets struggle with small objects.

 

In your second post you said: "AutoCAD is the one acting weird. For some reason dots in other boundaries are visible but not where they're supposed to be. I just tried to add different patterns but they're acting the same."

 

This statement made me think that since it was making dots but in the wrong places, that perhaps you had a gap issue. Check your "HPGAPTOL" setting. You can do a search in the help files to see how this will affect how hatches work.

 

In this last post you said: "Now I use hatch and fill them all with dots. Pattern is visible in all shapes - now I press print preview (or print) and rectangle looks empty again. It's not leaking, it simply isn't there"

Have you tried zooming up in print preview to see if the dots are there? If it's a fairly large drawing, they may just not show up in the preview. If you've made sure you have no gaps, and it still doesn't work, then I am at a loss to know the reason.

 

Here is the illustration I mentioned above.

[silk]

Thank you for such an analytical reply. It seems that I'm the only one who has this problem or just no-one understands. I'll just go and buy a felt-tip pen...

[SLW210]

Try going through your plot settings and system variables. Make sure the hatch is not on Defpoints or a non-plot layer. Do a search on CADTutor.

[Dana W]

Is your hatch scale simply too big? Is the hatch color too light? Some colors print WAY lighter than they appear in model space.

[hugha]

Some printer drivers won't successfully show the DOTS pattern as it's made up of zero-length lines.

 

Give this a whirl:

 

*LONGDOTS, A series of longer dots

0, 0,0, .03125,.0625, 0.0005,-.0620

 

 

Hugh Adamson

Cadro Pty Ltd

www.hatchkit.com.au