Topic Title

Is there any way to modify the hatch pattern drftstone so that some of the stones are white, some are dark grey and some are yellow so the hatch looks more hand drawn?

While I believe one of the numbers in the hatch defintion is reserved for color, that has not been supported as far as I know.
I'd think the best you could do is to rewirte the one pattern, taking the lines you want and put into 2 new hatch patterns, and then hatch the area with the 3 hatch patterns, each one set to a different color.

[Mark F. Madura]

Mark you totally lost me as far as revising anything. What I am looking for is a hatch pattern for gravel where some of the stones are dark grey and some are yellow. To bad there is not a hatch pattern generator for Datacad to create hatches.

[Mark F. Madura]

In the FWIW Dept,
I needed a hatch to do a syncopated shingle coursing alternating 2.75"/6.75", starting with the 2.75" course, and repeating every 9.5" vertically. This means the pattern has to have 2 different horizontal lines that repeat. Below is the hatch file I arrived at by adapting another DHP file, enduring some real trial and error learning. I named it after the job, and will modify and "save it as" for other jobs as the coursing varies.

[Header]
Scale=32
Angle=0
Display Scale=10
Segments=2

[Segments]
001=0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 9.5, 1
002=0, 0, 0, 0, 2.75, 0, 9.5, 1

To repeat the instructions I found in the CheapTricks June '96 issue, in a format even I can understand,

1st number = line weight, which is always "0" in DataCAD
2nd number = line color, which is always "0" in DataCAD
3rd number = "Angle", in this case 0 degrees
4th number = start distance from the origin along the X-axis
5th number = start distance from the origin along the Y-axis
6th number = offset distance along the X-axis, after rotation, to the repeat (for solid lines, this number will always be zero)
7th number = offset distance along the Y-axis, after rotation, which is more often than not, your basic spacing distance
("after rotation" for a vertical line rotated 90º means the X and Y axes are cranked 90º counterclockwise, so X becomes what was Y, and Y becomes what was -X. The only way I can understand it is to crank my head onto my left shoulder to read the repeat offset X and Y.)
8th-13th numbers = describe the line to be repeated itself, the values alternating between positive "pen down" and negative "pen up", so you can have up to 3 different line segments before the pattern repeats.
The basic unit of distance here is 1 unit = 1/32nd of an inch.

Thanks Neil,
I've saved that for future use. Like the Cheap Tricks article noted, it was hard to get my head around rotated lines in a pattern. Here, I think I made these correct. I should note that in the process of testing the patterns, I was having trouble getting the revised patterns to show when re-hatching a test hatch. I had to first delete the hatch, then purge the drawing (Hatch>Manage>Purge>OK) because the file hangs on to a hatch when it is deleted. As a young man, I had hangovers like that, which also required purging to prevent them.

Anyway, here are two patterns for pinwheeling tile patterns that are preset to 1" scale (I think - please jump in here to correct me on any of this) for 12" and 6" tiles. Someday I'll try to adjust them for, say 12" and 4" tiles, 12" and 3" tiles, etc.
----------------------------------------------
PinWhlL1-2.DHP
[Header]
Scale=32
Angle=0
Display Scale=10
Segments=2

[Segments]
001= 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 18, 6, 18, -12
002=0, 0, 90, 6, 0, 12, -6, 18, -12
----------------------------------------------
PinWhlR2-1.DHP
[Header]
Scale=32
Angle=0
Display Scale=10
Segments=2

[Segments]
001= 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 12, 6, 18, -12
002=0, 0, 90, 0, -6, 12, 6, 18, -12