Hatches displays a short list of hatches and not the normal full list?

[ROBinHI]

I have experienced this a few times where AutoCAD displays a short list of hatches, its almost like the default ACAD.pat hatches. I have AutoCAD configured where it loads my own acad.pat file from a specific location and its been working like that for years where we can see our full listing of hatches. For some reason on a few files, and this happens on rare occasions our normal patterns don't appear, we get this short list of patterns and I can't for the life of me figure it out. If I open a new file, the full list of hatch patterns will appear. I've renamed the default acad.pat and acadiso.pat in my user profile under autocad support with a .backup extension so that AutoCAD ignores them. Any ideas?

[Opie]

Are these drawings that exhibit this behavior set to metric measurement?

[ROBinHI]

Are these drawings that exhibit this behavior set to metric measurement?

Yes is it. Am I missing something simple that is common knowledge?

[scott.wilcox]

Although you have renamed ACADISO.PAT, my guess is AutoCAD is still finding an instance of it in the search path, and your MEASUREMENT variable is set to 1 (metric).

At the command line input the following: (findfile "acadiso.pat") [return] AutoCAD will return the location of the acadiso.pat file. You can do the same for acad.pat, to see if your desired files are loading.

Remember, AutoCAD will search the entire support file search path for these files, and load the first instance it finds.

[ROBinHI]

Actually, I should have said the original acadiso.pat and acad.pat were renamed and we configured acad to look into a network directory with our new acadiso.pat and acad.pat files with hatches our firm uses. Yes, my measurement is set to '1'. findfile is entered at the autocad command prompt or windows cmd prompt?

[hugh.69031]

>findfile is entered at the autocad command prompt or windows cmd prompt?

The AutoCAD prompt.

[cadtag]

Don't omit the parentheses -- findfile is a lisp function that takes one string argument; the file name you are looking for, and that needs to be in quotes.

(findfile "acadiso.pat")

that will return the full path to the first one it finds in your support path settings.

[ROBinHI]

Got it guys, thanks! it looks like its returning the correct file and path from where I want it to. For some reason its still displaying a short list. Would the measurement value having been set to metric (1) have any affect on which file it uses or what hatch patterns are displayed?

[hugh.69031]

Drawings with MEASUREMENT set to 1 will look in ACADISO.PAT to populate the available pattern list.
If you open new drawings with a template defaulting to Imperial units the pattern list will be populated from ACAD.PAT where you have added your extra patterns.

I suspect these patterns are not replicated in ACADISO.PAT.

- Inspect both standard .PAT files with a text editor.
- Look for the pattern headers which are lines commencing with an asterisk "*".
- Do both files contain all the patterns you expect to see?
- Does ACAD.PAT contain them and ACADISO.PAT contain only the shortened list?

Note that patterns representing real-world objects should have all dimensions factored up by 25.4 (or be scaled up on use) to maintain scale.

Another fix is to place all custom patterns in .PAT files (one pattern per file with filename and pattern name matching) within a directory known to the file search path. They will then turn up under the Custom pattern tab in the hatch dialog in ALL drawings.

[ROBinHI]

Dude, all these years I've never know that! Learn something new. Much thanks again. You guys are always so helpful!