Hatch

[jsitton]

Placing a hatch over an area in a drawing that is quite large.

This is what I get when autocad locks up:

Selecting everything visible...
Analyzing the selected data...
Analyzing internal islands...
Pick internal point or [Select objects/remove Boundaries]: 3987 selected,
Do you really want to do this? <N>

Once this prompt is displayed, autocad locks up. I then have to control+alt+delete to close autocad.

Wash and repeat - I noticed some text was placed across a line and moved that and it allowed me to hatch other areas, however that isn't the same issue this time around.

Note: I am trying to hatch an X-ref inside a drawing.

[dzatto]

Placing a hatch over an area in a drawing that is quite large.

This is what I get when autocad locks up:

Selecting everything visible...
Analyzing the selected data...
Analyzing internal islands...
Pick internal point or [Select objects/remove Boundaries]: 3987 selected,
Do you really want to do this? <N>

Once this prompt is displayed, autocad locks up. I then have to control+alt+delete to close autocad.

Wash and repeat - I noticed some text was placed across a line and moved that and it allowed me to hatch other areas, however that isn't the same issue this time around.

Note: I am trying to hatch an X-ref inside a drawing.

Are you sure it's locking up? CAD has almost 4,000 entites to scan through, plus it's an Xref. It could take some time.

Try putting a pline around the boundary you want hatched, then use the hatch command and choose the pline boundary, instead of clicking inside the area. If you have text that needs to be seen, instead of hatching around it, use the background mask in the text. Maybe that will help.

[jsitton]

Are you sure it's locking up? CAD has almost 4,000 entites to scan through, plus it's an Xref. It could take some time.

Try putting a pline around the boundary you want hatched, then use the hatch command and choose the pline boundary, instead of clicking inside the area. If you have text that needs to be seen, instead of hatching around it, use the background mask in the text. Maybe that will help.

I noticed a piece of text as well and that fixed the problem.

What sucks about using a Pline is the size and shape of what I'm trying to hatch. It's huge with a lot of corners. I was hoping to get by without doing that.

Thank you for the help. It is much appreciated.

[dzatto]

I noticed a piece of text as well and that fixed the problem.

What sucks about using a Pline is the size and shape of what I'm trying to hatch. It's huge with a lot of corners. I was hoping to get by without doing that.

Thank you for the help. It is much appreciated.

Yeah, it's not the best solution, but it works. Sometimes it's better to just do the pline, rather than wait for cad to work or not work after you've waited 5 minutes.

[jaberwok]

Walk away and get a cup of coffee - let acad get on with its "thinking".

[irneb]

It may take longer to create the hatch doing a polyline, but you'll pat yourself on the back for doing it in the end. That hatch by picking a point basically selects EVERYTHING ON SCREEN, so if your drawing is a bit involved it's not strange to see thousands of objects "selected" for the hatch boundary. Now if your hatch is also associative then you'll find modifying anything around (even not those objects actually creating the "boundary") will also bring up: "You are about to select ##### objects are you sure you want to do this? [Yes / No]: ".

If you don't like drawing the polyline yourself, you could use the BOUNDARY command to create the polyline by picking an internal point. Then hatch to the polylines created - has the same effect, but without "selecting" thousands of objects.

[archie.manza]

Also you can try avoiding blocks or xref's on the area when hatching.