Hatch Pattern Information

Free Hatch Patterns

To download these free hatch patterns, simply right click on the patterns you want and choose Save Link As, then place the PAT file in a path included in your CAD support paths.

Rules of Usage

  1. You may place these patterns on your system and use them in your drawings.
  2. You may not distribute these patterns in PAT form, instead refer associates to this page.
  3. You may not post them online (including web sites, ftp sites, bulletin boards, and other online services) for public downloading.
Preview Name Description
24x48 24"x48" Ceiling Tile with 1" Wide T-Bar
2H-STONE Two-Height Split Stone Masonry
ASPHALTS Asphalt Shingles with Architectural Cut
BUTTEDHB Butted Herringbone Parquetry
C-STONES Coursed 3",6",4" & 5" Random Length Stones
CHAINLNK Chain Link Fencing
CROSSLOK Cross Locking Pavers
FQ-TILE French Quarter Modular Ceramic Tile
GRAVEL2 Gravel Stones
HERRINGB Herringbone Parquet, 1" x 5"
METRO Metro Tile Pattern
Preview Name Description
MAZEBLOC Maze Pattern Cement Blocks
MUDSTONE Geologic Mudstone
PARQUET2 Parquet Flooring
PATHWAY Interlocking Artistic Garden Pavers
PINWHEEL Pinwheel, 1 & 2 Unit Squares
ROOF-1 Cedar Roofing
SCRNBLOC Screen Block
SPANTILE Spanish Tile Roofing
STAGGER Staggered Paving Brick
WEAVE-2 Weave Pattern Grouted Bricks
WIREMESH Wire Mesh or Weave

Credit: Watson Kilbourne of CompugraphX produced the highest quality hatch patterns available anywhere. Watson has donated these hatch patterns to the AutoCAD community.

Hatch Pattern Compatibility

The good news is that the hatch pattern format hasn't changed since it was first introduced years ago. Any hatch pattern you find should work with any previous or future version of your CAD engine!

2005 Hatch Pattern Snaps

There has been a change in behavior in AutoCAD 2005 regarding the object snaps on its geometry. In previous releases, osnaps would honor hatches, in 2005 they are ignored by default. To turn on the snap to hatch, access the OPTIONS dialog (Tools menu), go to the Drafting tab, and in the lower left you will find the toggle.

Also there is a command line system variable OSNAPHATCH, set to 0 for off (no snap), 1 for on (snap).

Adding Hatches

This procedure will walk through the process of adding a hatch pattern to your system, all the way through the final step of adding the pattern to the AutoCAD BHATCH dialog.

Note: Autodesk changed the behavior of the BHATCH dialog beginning in version 2000. As a result of this change, the BHATCH dialog completely ignores the hatch slide contained in the slide libary. It choose instead to create a very small (nearing unreadable) swatch on the fly, which takes a significant amount of time if you have hundreds of patterns. As such, this procedure may not be applicable unless you intend to compile your hatchs into a IMAGE menu.

Preparing the Pattern:

The first step is to obtain or create a hatch pattern that you would like to add. For terms of discussion we will use the GRAVEL.PAT found floating on the web (author unknown).

Note: This pattern does not have sufficient precision to properly display in large coordinate mapping, but should work well in most other applications. It has been reproduced here:

*GRAVEL, gravel pattern 
228.0128, 0.720,1.000, 12.041365,0.074329, 0.134536,-13.319088 
184.9697, 0.630,0.900, -12.041517,0.043315, 0.230868,-22.855925 
132.5104, 0.400,0.880, -14.865942,0.061430, 0.162788,-16.116032 
267.2737, 0.010,0.630, -20.024928,0.047565, 0.210238,-20.813558 
292.8337, 0.000,0.420, -12.999910,0.048507, 0.206155,-20.409373 
357.2737, 0.080,0.230, -20.024928,0.047565, 0.210238,-20.813558 
37.6942, 0.290,0.220, -16.401180,0.035968, 0.278029,-27.524849 
72.2553, 0.510,0.390, 23.086761,0.038097, 0.262488,-25.986321 
121.4296, 0.590,0.640, 15.264264,0.047405, 0.210950,-20.884073 
175.2364, 0.480,0.820, -12.045049,0.083045, 0.240832,-11.800763 
222.3974, 0.240,0.840, 16.278789,0.032108, 0.311448,-30.833375 
138.8141, 1.000,0.620, 9.219065,0.094072, 0.106301,-10.523844 
171.4692, 0.920,0.690, -13.152853,0.049447, 0.202237,-20.021511 
225.0000, 0.720,0.720, 0.707107,0.707107, 0.141421,-1.272792 
203.1986, 0.650,0.840, -5.383564,0.131306, 0.076158,-7.539615 
291.8014, 0.580,0.810, -3.156821,0.185695, 0.107703,-5.277462 
30.9638, 0.620,0.710, 3.601470,0.171499, 0.174929,-5.656023 
161.5651, 0.770,0.800, -2.213594,0.316228, 0.126491,-3.035787 
16.3895, 0.000,0.810, 10.440154,0.056433, 0.177200,-17.542845 
70.3462, 0.170,0.860, -11.704507,0.067267, 0.148661,-14.717408 
293.1986, 0.770,1.000, -5.383564,0.131306, 0.152315,-7.463458 
343.6105, 0.830,0.860, -10.440154,0.056433, 0.177200,-17.542845 
339.4440, 0.000,0.190, -5.383893,0.117041, 0.170880,-8.373124 
294.7751, 0.160,0.130, -12.082844,0.069843, 0.143178,-14.174643 
66.8014, 0.780,0.000, 5.383564,0.131306, 0.152315,-7.463458 
17.3540, 0.840,0.140, -13.601340,0.059655, 0.167631,-16.595424 
69.4440, 0.290,0.000, -5.383893,0.117041, 0.085440,-8.458564 
101.3099, 0.720,0.000, 4.118439,0.196116, 0.050990,-5.048029 
165.9638, 0.710,0.050, -3.152963,0.242536, 0.206155,-3.916950 
186.0090, 0.510,0.100, -10.049739,0.052342, 0.191050,-18.913923 
303.6901, 0.620,0.620, -2.218801,0.277350, 0.144222,-3.461329 
353.1572, 0.700,0.500, 17.117197,0.039715, 0.251794,-24.927563 
60.9454, 0.950,0.470, -8.061673,0.097129, 0.102956,-10.192674 
90.0000, 1.000,0.560, 1.000,1.000, 0.060000,-0.940 
120.2564, 0.490,0.130, -8.061936,0.071982, 0.138924,-13.753520 
48.0128, 0.420,0.250, 12.041365,0.074329, 0.269072,-13.184552 
0.0000, 0.600,0.450, 1.000,1.000, 0.260000,-0.740 
325.3048, 0.860,0.450, -12.206392,0.063246, 0.158114,-15.653274 
254.0546, 0.990,0.360, 4.120817,0.137361, 0.145602,-7.134508 
207.6460, 0.950,0.220, 21.470869,0.042182, 0.237065,-23.469474 
175.4261, 0.740,0.110, 13.038344,0.039873, 0.250799,-24.829074

We could place this code into the file GRAVEL.PAT, place it into a search path, and refer to it at the HATCH prompt. However, since our final goal is to have this pattern available in the BHATCH dialog, a little more work is required.

Command: HATCH 
Enter pattern name or [?/Solid/User defined] <ANSI31>: GRAVEL 
Scale for pattern <1.0000>: 5 
Angle for pattern <0>: <ENTER> 
Select hatch boundaries or press ENTER for direct hatch option, 
Select objects: <ENTER> 
Retain polyline? <N> <ENTER> 
From point: 0,0 
Arc/Close/Length/Undo/<Next point>: 16,0 
Arc/Close/Length/Undo/<Next point>: 16,10 
Arc/Close/Length/Undo/<Next point>: 0,10 
Arc/Close/Length/Undo/<Next point>: C 
From point or press ENTER to apply hatch: <ENTER>

The reason for the particular rectangle coordinates of 16x10 is to maintain the 1.6:1 ratio that the other hatch slides in the ACAD.SLB are created with.

Before we prepare the slide however, it is recommended that we enter paper space and create a viewport to represent the slide. Slides are clipped at the viewport boundaries, and it would be difficult to maintain this without the viewport.

Command: TILEMODE 
New value for TILEMODE <1>: 0 
Command: MVIEW 
ON/OFF/Hideplot/Fit/2/3/4/Restore/<First Point>: 0,0 
Other corner: 16,10 
Command: ZOOM 
All/Center/Dynamic/Extents/Previous/Scale(X/XP)/Window/<Realtime>: E 
Command: MSPACE

Finally we are ready to prepare the slide. However, before doing so it is recommended that you create a unique directory/folder to contain this and other slides. We will need to add more slides to this directory to rebuild the ACAD.SLB. For terms of this discussion, will use C:\SLIDES.

  1. Issue the MSLIDE command. When prompted in the dialog enter C:\SLIDES\GRAVEL.SLD for the filename.

    Note: At this point we have our slide in the directory and ready to rebuild the ACAD.SLB.

  2. Preparing to rebuild the ACAD.SLB file. Just like we backed up the ACAD.PAT file, it is a very good idea to backup the ACAD.SLB file. You will also find this file in the AutoCAD support directory.
  3. Since the SLIDELIB.EXE tool supplied with AutoCAD cannot simply append your slide to the SLB file, we will need to rebuild it from scratch containing the contents of the original SLB along with your slide.
  4. Rebuilding the ACAD.SLB file. Since SLIDELIB.EXE is an MS-DOS based tool, open an MS-DOS window and change to the slides directory.

    C:\WINDOWS> CD \SLIDES

  5. The easiest way to supply input to SLIDELIB.EXE is to prepare a file using the DOS DIR command. In this case we are also using the /ON switch to order by name, and the /B switch for bare (no size, date) listing. Finally with the > sign we are redirecting the output to create (or overwrite) the file SLIDE.INP.

    C:\SLIDES> DIR *.SLD /ON /B > SLIDE.INP

  6. Now that we have an input file for the SLIDELIB utility, we can call it from the AutoCAD directory. For the most convenience, you may want to move or copy the SLIDELIB.EXE from the AutoCAD directory to the slides directory to eliminate the cryptic DOS path.
  7. The Calling Command:

    C:\SLIDES> C:\PROGRA~1\AUTOCA~1\SUPPORT\SLIDELIB ACAD.SLB < SLIDE.INP

  8. If SLIDELIB.EXE was copied/moved:

    C:\SLIDES> SLIDELIB ACAD.SLB < SLIDE.INP

Overwriting the original ACAD.SLB

  1. Use your preferred method to copy the new ACAD.SLB from the slides directory to the AutoCAD support directory, overwriting the old one.
  2. The changes will be in effect immediately, simply issue the BHATCH command and see the rewards for your efforts.

Additional References: