DWG Hatches

[Brinley]

Light shedding required!!
I have a mgds drawing with area polygons individual objects...
These objects are also used for ceiling layout phased by a ceiling type attribute and then a linestyle override to show various hatches. The hook point of each is then positioned to show ceiling grid as required for each room.
When output to dwg, I assumed the styles would translate as seen in mgds but it looks like all the hatches (different blocks in acad) share the same origin which is a bit of a blow....!
is this how the output behaviour is or is it due to phasing by attributes/linestyle override?

[Brinley]

A bit of fiddling has sort of answered my question but would be good to see if there are any other suggestions....
It looks like even though there are a bunch of objects (1 polygon/object), when it goes to dwg, all the objects with the same line style share the same origin.
So in order to get all hatches in the correct space, every polygon, even though the same style, will have to have unique names!

[johnwarburton]

Brinley - having wrestled with this issue myself a long time ago, I dropped any idea that using a fill for ceiling patterns (or any tile pattern) was a good idea.

There are just too many variables of what happens to the exported data in terms of file versions and target application to be certain that the end result is going to accurately represent what you intended.

I've used hatches rather than fills for tile/grid layouts for as long as I can remember for just this reason.

[Brinley]

Wow!! I can't believe I have only discovered this now!! - after around 20 years! Embarrassing!!

I suppose not having sent a ceiling layout out as dwg is the reason but even that is astounding that that hasn't happened either!

it seems though that if every hatch had a different name it would be OK but that in itself is, IMHO, not worth the effort.

Thanks John

[James McClymont]

Hi Guys,

The ability to "burn-in" a hatch line-style, would be great...

The advantage of hatch linestyles e.g. setting out point (hook/origin) is obvious, but if it don't export...

Regards,

James.

[johnwarburton]

James/Brinley

I'm not sure how recent the change has been, or if it only works with the latest versions of AutoCAD, but at least some of the hatch styles export as real graphics now. I'm using v 11 of MicroGDS and tested it with ACAD 2011. It would be interesting to see if the same works with older versions of ACAD.

If you select the graphics in AutoCAD and explode them, you can then import the DWG back into MicroGDS and voila! You have real graphics. If you don't explode them, they come back as hatch styles again. After exploding, you actually get both versions back - the hatched primitive and the hatch converted to graphics.

One possibility is to set up a new window which is filtered to include only the graphics that contain the hatch styles. Run it through AutoCAD and back into MicroGDS and you have effectively burnt in the graphics (without the object structure though.)

[Brinley]

Haven't fiddled more with it....the hatch origin thing!
As a matter if interest, getting simple-ish fill (graphic lines) to 'burn-in', PUBLISH to dwg (v11) - this gives a pretty good MicroGDS look-a-like in ACAD. The down side though is it dumps it onto one layer but can be handy if you want the graphics in MicroGDS!
I think I tested it for the hatch lines I wanted in a specific origin and the output still used the ACAD method of choosing a dodgy origin to misplace the graphics.

What John has said about ACAD 2011 would do the job - but it was the sending to ACAD that was the issue.