Adding Hatch Patterns

[ReMark]

Watson Kilbourne...the master of the custom hatch pattern. Here's a website where you can purchase a few hundred of his custom patterns for a darn good (cheap) price:

 

http://www.compugraphx.com/

 

If that is still too expensive for your tastes then try over at Cadalyst magazine where you'll find WK contributed a number of free hatch patterns over the years to the CAD Tips section. Start by going to:

 

www.cadalyst.com

[ReMark]

Free for the downloading hatch patterns here:

 

http://www.cadcorner.ca/hatch.php

[rccola]

Thanks for all you help.

 

I finally figured out.

[LarsT]

I tried adding a custom hatch, following all the instructions here, but it will not show up. I made sure to save the file as an AutoCAD pattern file *.pat, and I even created a new pattern file, and it still does not show up. Is there something I need to do to activate it? I closed AutoCAD and restarted it, but this didn't help.

 

AutoCAD Help said that I need to "set type to custom" in order to see custom hatches, but I don't know how to do that.

[hugha]

Oh boy, I did this for another thread whereupon it turned out it wasn't what the doctor ordered. Could help here tho'.

[LarsT]

Here's what my hatch dialog box looks like - I think I attached the file, although I can't see it yet. I did set the type to custom, but the hatch pattern I added did not show up. I think I must be using a different version of AutoCAD because your box looks different. When I click on the ... beside the "Custom Pattern" box, nothing comes up.

[LarsT]

I finally figured out my problem - I had an idea that I was saving the file to the wrong place, even though I put it in the folder where acad.pat is, which is C:\Program Files\AutoCAD 2005\UserDataCache\Support\. I read in this site that *.pat files should be in the \Support\ folder (still not specific enough), and so I copied my new pattern to C:\Program Files\AutoCAD 2005\Support\. It appears that AutoCAD has two \Support\ folders, and this was not identified before. The instructions I read before said to put the new file in the same folder where I found acad.pat, but this does not work for me.

 

Does everyone else have two Support folders? I think that is confusing.

 

I went back to look at the first instruction, and it said to find the \support\ folder here:

c:\Documents and Settings\(your username)\Application Data\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2005\R16.1\enu\support\ (edited to show my exact location)

 

I guess that's where I should have looked first, but I did find acad.pat in the Program Files as well. It seems that I was using the one place that would not work!

[LarsT]

Thanks, Hugh. I saved your tip in a Word file that I use for AutoCAD tips. I'll get around to moving the files around later, since they work okay now. I have yet to use the Support File Search Path, but it looks like it could be helpful.