Often, here in the machine shop I am confronted with the wonderful task (who am I kidding... ) on cleaning up drawings for either cnc output or for presentation purposes and after many hours of scrambling about with hatching work I eventually came up with a quick and easy solution to hatch an area without all of the clean up needed - yes sometimes it is easy to prepare a boundary for hatching but at other times it is not and if the final output is for diagrammatic purposes only then the following method should suffice!
The method:
Step 1/ Turn off all other unnecessary layers leaving only the one showing what you need to crate a boundary with.
- Step 1.jpg (67.21 KiB) Viewed 72125 times
Step 2/ Set up a new layer 'Trace'.
- Step 2.jpg (26.55 KiB) Viewed 72125 times
Step 3/ Drafting on layer 'Trace', select to use the Spline tool ( Control Points).
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Step 4/ Select the snap option -'On Entity'.
- Step 4.jpg (13.01 KiB) Viewed 72125 times
Step 5/ Using the spline tool trace around the area needed to create a boundary, just follow the profile around snapping as you go - you will need to snap more frequently and closer together to achieve a better fit at corners - this process doesn't take as long as you think!
- Step 5.jpg (13 KiB) Viewed 72125 times
Step 6/ When you have completed your tracing, turn off the underlying layer to only leave the layer 'Trace'. Then with the spline selected go to the Hatch tools and select 'Hatch from selection'.
- Step 6.jpg (26.38 KiB) Viewed 72125 times
Step 7/ In the Hatch dialog window, choose the hatch type you need and hit the OK button.
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Step 8/ Delete the spline, to leave only the hatching.
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Step 9/ Select the hatching and in the property editor change the hatch to the layer you need!
- Step 9.jpg (44.47 KiB) Viewed 72125 times
Step 10/ Turn on the layers again and job done
- Step 10.jpg (13.67 KiB) Viewed 72125 times
