Hatching is a simple but powerful way to make AutoCAD drawings clearer and easier to understand.
Whether you want to identify different materials, highlight specific areas or simply make your drawings easier to read, the Hatch command allows you to quickly add patterns, solid fills and gradients to your drawing.
In this guide, we’ll take you through how to use Hatch in AutoCAD, from creating your first hatch to adjusting patterns, scale and angle. We’ll also look at some of the newer ways you can create hatches and some common problems you may encounter along the way.
What is Hatch in AutoCAD?
Hatch allows you to fill an enclosed area or selected objects with a pattern, solid colour or gradient.
For example, architectural drawings may use different hatch patterns to represent materials such as brick, concrete or insulation, while engineering drawings can use hatching to distinguish between different components or areas.
Rather than manually drawing these patterns, AutoCAD creates and manages them for you.
How to Create a Hatch in AutoCAD
Creating a basic hatch only takes a few steps.
1. Start the Hatch command: type HATCH into the command line and press Enter. Alternatively, go to the Home tab on the ribbon and select Hatch from the Draw panel.
2. Choose your hatch pattern: once the Hatch command is active, select the pattern you want to use. AutoCAD includes a range of predefined hatch patterns, as well as options for solid fills and gradients. Choose a pattern that suits what you are trying to represent within your drawing.
3. Select the area you want to hatch: you can now tell AutoCAD where the hatch should be created. One of the easiest methods is Pick Points. Click inside an enclosed area and AutoCAD will detect the surrounding boundary. Alternatively, use Select Objects to manually select the objects that form the boundary.
4. Adjust your hatch: before finishing, you can change properties including:
- Pattern
- Scale
- Angle
- Transparency
- Colour
- Background colour
This allows you to control exactly how the hatch appears within your drawing.
5. Finish the Hatch command: Once you're happy with the result, press Enter or select Close Hatch Creation from the ribbon. Your hatch will now be added to the drawing.
Pick Points or Select Objects?
When creating a hatch, there are two common ways to define where it should appear.
Pick Points allows you to click inside an enclosed area. AutoCAD analyses the surrounding geometry and automatically identifies the boundary.
This is particularly useful when working with an area that has already been created from several lines, arcs or other objects.
Select Objects, on the other hand, lets you manually choose the objects that should define your hatch.
Which method works best will depend on your drawing and the geometry you're working with.
Create Hatches Without a Predefined Boundary
Traditionally, creating a hatch meant having an existing closed boundary within your drawing.
Newer versions of AutoCAD provide more flexibility by allowing you to create hatch geometry using Area, Path and Shape options.
Hatch an Area
The Area option lets you define a rectangular, circular or polygonal area and apply a hatch at the same time. This can be useful when you don't already have boundary geometry in place and want to quickly create a hatched area.
Hatch Along a Path
With the Path option, you can define a hatch along selected geometry. This provides another way of creating hatched areas without first having to draw a traditional closed boundary.
Create a Hatch Shape
The Shape option allows you to define the shape of the hatch directly during creation. Together, these options can reduce the number of separate steps required to create your geometry and apply hatching.
How to Change a Hatch Pattern in AutoCAD
Already created your hatch but want to use a different pattern? You don't need to delete it and start again.
Select the existing hatch and use the Hatch Editor to choose another pattern. You can also use the Properties palette to make changes to many of the hatch's settings.
This makes it easy to experiment with different patterns until you find the one that works best for your drawing.
How to Change Hatch Scale
If your hatch doesn't look quite right, the scale is one of the first settings worth checking.
Select your hatch and adjust the Hatch Pattern Scale value.
Increasing the scale makes the pattern appear larger and more spread out, while decreasing the value makes the pattern smaller and more closely spaced. The appropriate scale will depend on the size of your drawing, the hatch pattern you're using and what you are trying to represent.
If a hatch appears completely solid when you expected to see a pattern, checking the scale can often help.
How to Change the Hatch Angle
You can also rotate hatch patterns by changing their angle.
Select the hatch and find the Angle setting within the Hatch Editor or Properties palette. Enter the required angle and AutoCAD will rotate the pattern within its boundary.
This can be particularly useful when you want to differentiate neighbouring areas that use the same hatch pattern.
What is an Associative Hatch?
When creating a hatch, you'll also see the option to make it associative.
An associative hatch maintains a relationship with its boundary. If you modify the boundary later, the hatch can automatically update to reflect the change.
For drawings that are likely to change throughout a project, keeping your hatches associative can reduce the amount of manual editing required.
How to Edit an Existing Hatch
You can make changes to a hatch at any point without recreating it. Select the hatch to access the Hatch Editor, where you can adjust settings such as its:
- Pattern
- Scale
- Angle
- Colour
- Transparency
- Origin
You can also access many of these options through the Properties palette. Taking advantage of these controls makes it much easier to keep hatching consistent throughout a drawing.
Make Better Use of Hatch in AutoCAD
Hatch is one of those AutoCAD tools that can appear simple at first but offers plenty of options for making drawings clearer and workflows more efficient.
Understanding how to select boundaries, control scale and angle, edit existing hatches and use associative hatching can save time when drawings need to be updated.
With newer Area, Path and Shape workflows providing additional ways to create hatches, you also have more flexibility over how and when hatching is introduced into your drawing.
Want to Improve Your AutoCAD Skills?
At TMS CADCentre, our instructor-led AutoCAD training can help you build confidence and discover more efficient ways to work in AutoCAD.
As an Autodesk Authorised Training Centre, we offer AutoCAD training for different experience levels, with courses available online and at our training centre in Larbert.
Explore our AutoCAD training courses or get in touch with our team to discuss the right training for you.
