The Crosshatch functions are available from the Detail>Crosshatch Ribbon area. Crosshatch patterns are line patterns that represent materials such as copper, glass, or steel. Each of the lines in a crosshatch pattern is known as a hatch line. Use crosshatching to fill a specific, enclosed area of your 2D model. When cutting or sectioning a part, use crosshatching to distinguish material from open space.

When using the available Crosshatch functions, it is important to keep the following in mind:

• You can crosshatch parts that have overlapping geometry. Crosshatching treats intersecting entities that overlap as one entity.

• You can select from any of the provided crosshatching patterns; and add customized crosshatching patterns from a variety of sources to suit your needs.

• You can specify the angle, scaling and offset applied to the hatch pattern.

• If you intend to crosshatch a 3D model, you may need to add some construction geometry to your part in order to complete the crosshatching. If the border entities intersect when projected into the CPlane, the crosshatch should be created successfully.

Crosshatch Islands

An island is an area inside of another area that generates a hole in the hatch lines. Crosshatching draws from the outermost selected boundary until it reaches the first selected island. From there, the crosshatching is stopped until it reaches the other side of the island or the start of another island. For example, crosshatching three concentric circles results in hatching between the two largest circles, and inside the smallest circle.

You do not have to edit entities to form a perfectly closed boundary. The boundary entities will be trimmed to form closed loops, and small gaps in the boundary will be healed.

Islands can include notes and dimensions. When a text entity is included in the boundary entities, the text is treated as an island, and no crosshatching is done inside the text box. For a dimension, the box is larger than the computed text box by 1/4 of a text height on all sides. For all other text entities, it is 1/2 of a text height on all sides. The difference is because the text box of a dimension already includes a margin.

Crosshatch Association:

Crosshatch association is the relationship between the crosshatching and the entities that define its boundary and islands. When the boundary entities change, or when entities are added to or removed from the crosshatch, it recomputes its hatch lines. If the changes cause the outer boundary no longer to be a closed boundary, and there are islands inside it, the outermost island becomes the new outer boundary.

For example, if there are three squares of different sizes, each having the same center, a crosshatch of these lines creates two hatch regions, one between the outermost and middle quares, and one inside the smallest square. Deleting one of the lines from the outer square causes the middle square to become the outer boundary, and the smallest square becomes an island. This results in hatching between the two smallest squares and nothing in the middle.

If the crosshatches recomputes its hatch lines, and the result is that no hatch lines are generated, the hatch continues to show its previous hatch lines. Editing a crosshatch to change the pattern parameters while it is in this state results in no visible changes to the crosshatch.

If additional entities are added to the crosshatch, or the entities are modified such that they once again cause hatch lines to be created, the hatch updates. If the hatch pattern parameters were changed, those new parameters are used.

See Also:

Creating a Custom Pattern