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New to hatch, need a quick primer


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Posted

New to Bricscad, new to needing to incorporating hatches for visual effect.  I have a project coming up to cut from 4 different colors of stone. The concept drawing shows it to be relatively complex. I'll need to break out the mosaic of pieces from the various colors of stone to nest on the slabs once the final contours and coloration are complete. My thought would be to create 4 layers corresponding to the stone colors and lay them one on top of the other. I'm thinking I'll need an additional 4 layers of hatch colors and differing styles to show the design and shading while working with the pieces, so the proper contours get cut from the proper color of stone. I can then separate out the different colors to trim them in to their correct geometry for nesting purposes on the slabs. I'm looking at perhaps 100+ individual pieces to be cut. 

 

Does this sound like the proper way to do this? I am open to suggestions at this point.

 

 I did try this with a simple sample design; made the 4 layers of colors, made the 4 layers of hatches. Locked up all but the red hatch and the red stone layer and moved it off to the side. Bad news is all the hatches came with it, even though locked so I missed something. Having never used hatching before I'm not even sure what questions to ask about how to fix that problem. 

hatch test for colors.dwg

Posted

Update: I made a similar drawing in AC 2011LT. I used a solid hatch on the stone color layer. This worked as intended. I'm not sure why it was so straight forward in AC but not working as expected in Bricscad. 2011LT drawing attached.

hatch test 3.dwg

Posted

There should be no need to lock anything, at least not that I know of, it only makes your selections more difficult, I would just use a single layer to create your 'pattern' and then use the hatches to fill in the colred areas as needed, in your drawing the hatches are all linked (per color) so selecting 'use separate hatches' could help you a bit, your hatches are also associated to the geometry. Which means when you move or stretch the lines then your hatch adjusts automatically, which is normally a good thing. It also means that when you move the geometry the hatch follows it. Moving the hatch will break that associativity, and you should notice that whilst a hatch is associated it just has a single grip when it is selected, and has multiple grips when it is not associated.

So best method (in my opinion) create your pattern on one layer (but nothing wrong if you prefer 4), use 4 layers for the colors and hatch the pattern with the correct colors select the option to create separate hatchs and deselect assosiactive, then select all the hatches and copy them off to one side, and select again for each of the 4 layers, and make the layer active, use the command 'hatchgenerateboundary' (this is where you might actually want to use your other 4 layers for each stone type. You should now have 4 sets of polylines to move about for cutting out.

Posted

Thank you for taking a look at this. I've read through your reply a number of times and I think this is how I'm absorbing what you're describing. 

1.  My actual pattern will be a single layer. I most definitely want to keep a copy of it in its refined state, before messing with it. In essence, it will be the original line drawing that everything will be built on.

2.  I then create 4 layers corresponding to my colors, these will govern the colored areas of the pattern. After positioning each colored hatch to the area it belongs, I'll have a total of 5 layers contained withing the boundaries of my pattern. (base pattern + 4 colors). At this stage, these 4 colors are for the hatch clarity only?

3. I would then copy the entire colored pattern (all 5 layers) to get a total of 5 copies,  the original to remain static, while the remaining 4 would be actively trimmed according to color selected. After trimming, I'll have a given number of individual pieces that all have a single color hatch of strange shapes in their respective copies. 

 

Is this essentially correct? Many of the terms and commands are ones that I've never used before or am clear on how they apply in practice and this is my first time really needing them. 

 

Also, you mention that in my drawing, my hatches are all linked by color......can you tell me how they are linked as I thought they were all on separate layers when I placed them. I'm trying to understand how I went wrong and why the other colored hatches on locked layers ( at least I thought they were on locked layers) moved when I only had the red layers open. 

 

I am going to try a sample drawing again and try to incorporate these steps over the weekend hopefully. Thanks again for your observations!

Posted

OK, did another test based on my interpretation of the above instructions. This seemed to work much better. I think one mistake I made earlier was not exploding the polylines before hatching or attempting to trim. Anyway, I think this is on the right track to being a workable solution. 

hatch test 4.dwg

Posted

Attached is what I had in mind (copied to the left, when you select a colored hatch it selects all the segments of that color in one go, I just meant each segement being independant, but that might not be what you require. I understood that you would have lots of parts and would want to arrange the same colors to nest them for best fit for cutting, so you could move them independantly, it's just a tick box in the hatch dialogue.

 

 

hatch test 4.dwg

Posted

Thank you again for your help. Apparently, I'm not able to follow simple instructions. I copied my base geometry and exploded it before hatching. I drew the 4 color hatches, ticking create separate hatches and unclicking the associative button, clicking Ok after each color, then re-enabling the command to do the next color. All colored hatches on their own layer, I then enabled the hatchgenerateboundary command and clicked on a color. Only one segment of the hatch highlighted, not all 3, or 2 or whatever; just the one area. So I clicked on all areas of the respective color and copied over to the side. Only the hatch moved, not the geometry surrounding it. No boundary around it so obviously I'm doing something wrong or in the wrong order. 

 

By locking the respective color layers, I'm able to copy the whole design over with just the active color hatch, and then I'm able to trim it out to end up with the shape. This is similar to what I was doing with the original hatch test 4 drawing.

 

Given the we have a base pattern of say 80 pieces, equally split so 20 of each of the 4 colors; if what you've described in your posts above allows you to click on 1 of the 20 segments and it highlight all 20, and you are able to copy or move all 20 with their respective borders away from the other 60 pieces for the next step of separating these 20-1 color pieces for further manipulation, I'm very interested in getting this to work. It seems to be a significant time saver compared to my copying the drawing completely 4 times and fully trimming out 4 times for the respective colors. I've searched Youtube for Bricscad based videos doing this sort of thing, their tutorials list and their help center. Next step would be to try their forum but I've found so much help here at Cadtutor over the years I thought this would be the best place for help. Again, many thanks.

Posted

Sorry it could be me misunderstanding what you are trying to achieve, indeed if you use separate hatches you do have to select them individually (or use selectsimilar for just hatches on a particular layer). The way you were doing it lets you move the colored hatches as one unit, but the relationship between them can't be changed. So whichever is easiest for you.

Maybe keeping the hatches together (not separate would be best for that first part) and then when each color has been moved/copied to the right spot, use the hatchgenerateboundary, which should produce the individual polyline boundaries which you can move independantly.

Posted

I think we're trying to achieve the same result but your method seems faster and less intense than what I'm muddling with. When I view your results, your borders came with your hatch's, mine did not. "Selectsimilar" is also a new command that I will try on the sample drawing. Perhaps I'm putting too much emphasis on keeping the colors on a different layers. More likely I'm still just not "getting it".  My fault, not yours.  

 

As long as I get the correct geometry for the given color, I'll be able to proceed OK.  I'm not clear on how I can keep the hatches and geometry "together" for clarity in breaking out the shapes for nesting,  yet keep them isolated so when I move the red stones away from the blue stones, I don't steal the geometry I'll need for the blue stone, too.  Perhaps the selectsimilar command is a copy function that leave the perimeter geometry in place from the source chosen?  I'll have to try it to see.  I don't have much time today to fuss with this but will give it additional attention over the next couple of days. 

 

 

Posted

selectsimilar also has a variable 'selectsimilarmode' that works with it, typing selectsimilarmode opens a dialogue with tick boxes for you to pick the properties that selectsimilar should work with, on a basic level selectsimilar will select all same types of geometry so if you select a line, and then run selectsimilar, the program will select all the lines in the drawing, but setting selectsimilarmode will let you choose just specific lines, ie. only lines on the same layer or only lines of the same color (or a combination of properties).

Having your hatches "created by color" so NOT seperate is probbably the best way to go, so they stay connected and then just copy them across to somewhere else is an easy step, then setting the active layer for each color to run the hatchgenerate boundary would give you the outlines as individual polyline shapes which you can then nest as required.

Posted

OK, making progress. Clicking on the hatches and moving them over, got it.  Command "hatchgenerateboundary" applied, adds the closed polyline perimeter to the selected hatches. Got it. Newbie question; does the coarseness of the hatch affect the boundary generation at all?Is it a question of the finer the mesh of the hatch, the closer the geometry to the original? I'm assuming that the fineness doesn't matter, that it is "remembering" the correct geometry no matter the hatch chosen.  I'd hate to discover at the end of this process that I should have allowed for a "fudge factor" in the boundary edge re-generation. 

 

I did copy over the actual base geometry on a few of them to check and the re-generated contours seem to be an exact replica of the original base geometry. 

 

In messing around, when I use the selectsimilar command, it selects every correct hatch  in my drawing and moves it accordingly. I saw this with all my experimental bits and pieces so I now understand how this command is applicable. I'm going to try this with a more complicated drawing at some point to refine the technique and be sure I've got a handle on it. 

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