Topic Title

Out of the box there are hatches with stars, squares, etc, but none of varying size holes on a 60* grid. Does this animal exist and is it available? I would be most thankful.

Stephen

Hatch patterns have to have repeats, in X and Y directions, and circles as part of a pattern is tough to do. So, various sized circles would be very difficult to make, I think?

Can you post an example of what you are looking for or what you are trying to represent?

I was looking for a representation of perforated metal using circular holes on a 60* grid, not the usual X/Y axi(?).

There are DC hatches using 60*. I did a dot hatch @ 60* and also constructed what I am looking for. Attached aec file. I imagine that it is (would be) possible to vary the grid dimension as well as the hole diameter.

Stephen

there is a HTCH_MGR macro that might help in creating the hatch.

Since I'm out of work I spent some time over the last few days and figured this out.

I have a custom hatch as per the file using a Dodecagon, a 12 sided shape.

I've invested the hours and it's taught me a lot and can probably create any needed custom hatch at this point. Who knows maybe I can get some side work?

I started this, more out of curiosity since I was doing a detail that could have used what I was asking for. I never thought that it would be so time consuming and I have decided that I could cover the issue with a 'simple' note.

[Mark F. Madura]

The hatch pattern definition is difficult to visualize when you need to use segments (versus infinite lines). For a 12-sided 'circle', 12 segments are required. So the Dodecagons will be made up of 12 dashed lines repeating perpendicular to six different angles.

The comma-delimited format for each 'Segment' (dot, infinite line, or segment(s)) is the following:
Note: All values are in Decimal Degrees or Decimal 32nds
(1) Line Weight (required, but ignored)
(2) Line Color (required, but ignored)
(3) Angle for the 'Segment'
(4) Starting X-Offset from the origin of the pattern
(5) Starting Y-Offset from the origin of the pattern
(6) Delta-X, tangent to the Segment Angle (only used for dashed lines)
(7) Delta-Y, perpendicular to the Segment Angle (i.e. the spacing)
(8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13) Optional Line Pattern (i.e. Dashes). Negative values are 'gaps'

Thanks Mark!

I enjoyed figuring this out in a custom hatch file and by the time I was done I have an easy way to get the distances out of DataCAD and quickly converted into the line format required for the DHP files to paste it back in.

In a past life I worked in the metal panel industry and when we fabricated perforated panels these custom hatches could have saved some time with large scale elevations and details and of course be reusable for standardized patterns, and I'm always up for learning something new in DataCAD!

Quite possibly nobody will ever use it, but I couldn't help myself:

After using Excel to create most of the content in my dotted circle hatch in the previous post, I realised that it would be pretty easy to create the entire hatch in Excel and to base it on parameters such as number of dots and circle spacing...

The resulting Excel file is attached (note that Excel may disable functionality on downloaded spreadsheets - you will probably need to Enable Editing, and then Enable Content in order to use the spreadsheet).
I have limited the number of dots to 512 (simply because it seemed like a nice round number - I think DataCAD can handle up to 999, not sure if it can do more than that) and the spacing to a minimum of 1/10th the circle diameter (which will produce very overlapped circles). Other than that you can specify pretty much what you want to create patterns such as those shown below:

CircleVariations.png (13.95 KiB) Viewed 15020 times

could one do a similar effect using the existing circle hatch, but do at a 45° or 60° angle?