How to Create Hatches in ZWCAD Flex

ZWCAD Flex makes it easy to apply professional hatch patterns to your 2D drawings. This guide walks you through how to create, customize, and control hatching to help you represent materials and textures in your designs. 

Creating Hatches

You can use the HATCH or BHATCH commands to fill closed areas with patterns, solid colors, or gradients. Hatching is often used to show materials or textures. 

· Pattern hatch: Fills an area with squares, diagonal lines, or dot patterns.

· Solid hatch: Fills an area with uniform colors.

· Gradient hatch: Fills an area with gradient colors.

Hatch Patterns

Execute the HATCH command to select hatch patterns. ZWCAD Flex offers three types of patterns: 

· Predefined: Built-in patterns that you can choose from.

· User defined: Create a pattern based on the current line type.

· Custom: You can import your own pattern by adding a PAT file in the Options dialog box.

Hatch Origins

The origin is the starting point of the hatch pattern. Execute the HATCH command, and you can set the hatch origin in the Hatch dialog box.

· Current origin: Uses the UCS.

· Specified origin: Choose your own origin point in the drawing.

· Use points within the boundary range: Pick a corner or the center of the boundary box. 

Hatch Boundaries

You can set the boundary for hatching in two ways: 

· Select one or more points in a closed area to automatically define the boundary.

· Select one or more closed objects as the hatch boundary. 

Boundary Set Range

By default, ZWCAD Flex checks the whole screen to find boundaries. If your drawing is too large, this can slow things down. To make it faster, you can manually select the boundary objects in the Hatch dialog. 

Boundary Gap

If the boundary is not a closed area, the program will prompt "No valid boundary found." To fix this, you can use the HPGAPTOL variable to ignore the gap and treat it as a closed area for hatching. 

Island Detection 

An island is a closed area inside another one. You can choose how it's detected: 

· Normal: hatch outer area, skip islands.

· Outer: hatch only the outermost boundary

· Ignore: hatch everything, even inside islands. 

Gradient Hatch

Gradient hatches give a soft color transition, which is useful for rounded shapes like cylinders or spheres. 

To use it, execute the GRADIENT command and switch to the Gradient tab.

· Monochromatic Hatch

A monochromatic gradient is a smooth transition between one color and either a lighter shade (mixed with white) or a darker shade (mixed with black). You can adjust the gradient through the Shading - Gradient slider. 

· Two Color Hatch

Two color hatch is a smooth blend between two chosen colors.