Custom .pat files

[Nickdp]

Hi y'all - I've read the help files on creating a custom hatch ... oops I mean fill pattern, it looks easy enough but when I load my first custom .pat file, it crashes Revit :(

Is my custom .pat file so bad I ask myself.

Does anyone know of a tutorial or additional help file on this subject that I might look at or download ?

I'm not obsessd with creating one - I just want the satisfaction of successfully creating one and NOT crashing my machine. ;)

[Martin P]

Are you doing them with the text editor, or just the basic ones with line spacing etc? I am guessing it is with a text editor if you are crashing..... the only advice I can offer is to to to RUGI.org and hope somebody else has done it already!! I have spent many frustrated hours trying to grapple with creating hatches longhand, just when you think it all makes sense - it wont work :cry:

Most likely culprit for a crash will be the scale though, too small might cause you bother.

I think there are some (pay for) shareware packages around that will create them for you (for autocad, but it is th e same thing anyway) cant remember though I gave up with creating them a long time ago :roll:

[bmadsen]

Just an idea to help you debug for missing/extra characters:
- Since the format includes comma's try saving it as a TXT format file
- Then open it up in Excel and look for misplaced columns, etc.

This won't solve the problem, but it might help identify a problem if you have defined several lines in the pattern.

[jacob chavez]

I had this same problem and it seemed that the issue was that I was not defining a Y offset. I think the Y offset is the third value in the line. When I gave that a value, it would work in revit. I did get my pattern to look right, but was still unable to completely understand how it was working. I too would be interested in a tutorial. Its nice to be able to create pat files that are lean in nature and its difficult, if not impossible to create them with a generator. BTW I think you're talking about Haci or Boobihatch.

JC

[Nickdp]

Thanks for the posts guys - Jacob, I think your problem is what I've got. I shall try giving the y-offset a value and see what happens. I can't believe that coding custom hatch patterns looks so easy (or so it seems when you read the help files) yet proves to be soo hard (refer Martin P's post). If anyone has unlocked the custom pat file puzzle, please post the details so we can all get clued in.

[bmadsen]

I shall try giving the y-offset a value and see what happens.

Did it work?

If not, here is some PAT debugging information from unamed sources:
- Custom PAT files can contain only a single hatch pattern definition; files with multiple hatch pattern definitions cannot be read.
- The name of the PAT file itself must be the same as the name of the pattern definition it contains.
- There must be a final carriage return after the last line in the PAT file.
- There must be no extra blank lines at the end of the file. (yes, can conflict with instruction above - try one or the other)
- Lines in the PAT file cannot contain more than 80 characters.
- The custom PAT file must reside in the software search path.
- The file names of custom PAT files cannot be longer than 32 characters.

Hope this helps all you PAT coders out there.

[PeterJ]

- Custom PAT files can contain only a single hatch pattern definition; files with multiple hatch pattern definitions cannot be read.

Beg to differ.

The simple custom definitions that I have created have simply been added to the end of the standard pat file so that I keep everything in one place. That suggests you can have multiple definitions in a single file as you already do.

[christo4robin]

So I'm curious--when I import one of my old acad patterns, does Revit automatically append that pattern to the Revit pattern file? Where does my new definition get stored?

C

[bclarch]

My understanding is that Revit extracts the data that it needs and stores it in the file for that particular project. The .pat file remains where it was and unchanged. Kind of like loading a family.

[PeterJ]

That's my take on things too. The pat file is a store of information that you go and borrow from when you wish to define a fill pattern. The definition is then held in the rvt file 'til such time as you purge unused, you would then need to go and extract the info again if you had not previosuly used that pattern.