Hatch Pattern Too Dense... WHAT?

Have you ever tried to hatch something and got the "Hatch Pattern Too Dense" error and wonder what the heck? Basically, there is a setting in AutoCAD that controls max number of elements a hatch can create. The default value is set to 10,000. To make sure you don't get this error again copy and past the following into your AutoCAD command line....

(setenv "MaxHatch" "100000000")

This is a LISP command and it is case sensitive, so if you are typing it make sure you type it exactly as it appears above.

Where is my dialog?

What is FILEDIA? Well, it is a system variable that controls weather or not commands bring up the dialog box. I am sure this has happened to a few of you guys and gals. You click the open or save button and the dialog box doesn't open but instead it asks you to type in the file name... WITH THE WHOLE PATH!!! WHAT!!!! I know a few of you who couldn't fix it ended up typing out the entire part.

First, to fix this all you have to do (usually) is type FILEDIA and set it to 1. Now everything should be set back to the way they should be. Another variable that might control this is CMDDIA. This should be set to one also, unless you like typing everything out.

I used to deal with this happening a lot with Land Desktop, usually when trying to set an alignment current. What happens is a lisp routine that switches the FILEDIA to 0 got interrupted and FILEDIA never got set back to 1. This happens when you start a command and then half way through you hit the Esq key to get out, usually about 20 times because you realized that you could mess things up.

If this post helps one person out I will feel as though it was success.

Hatch Origin

I am sure this has happened to everyone. You go to do a concrete hatch (AR-CONC) of an area and the hatch looks like this....


Now, this doesn't quite look the way you expected it to. The concrete pattern doesn't have the closed triangles. To test it out you go to another drawing and you get a correct hatch...



Now why does this happen? If you want me to bore you with why this happens go ahead and e-mail me and I will try my best to explain it, but basically it has to do with the base point of the hatch pattern. This is the origin of the pattern. The farther away from the origin of your drawing (0,0) the more likely your hatch will come out a little out of whack. Usually this happens when you are working on something that is based on GIS coordnates and your X:Y is 6,000,000:6,000,000 and the hatch origin is at 0:0

Before AutoCAD 2005 there were some lisp routines to fix this or you could type SNAPBASE and pick a new base point. Now (since 2006+) it is built into the hatch command (and the hatch edit command). In the lower left corner you will now see the hatch Origin options...

For the best results I recommend checking the box "Default to boundaey extents" box. Doing this will pretty much give you consistent results.

Well, good luck!