Adding Hatch Patterns

William Arens

 I've been trying to add hatch patterns I've used in cad in the past by two ways: 1) Simply copying the entire .pat file into the Applications/BricsCAD V16/Contents/Mac OS/UserDataCach/Support/en_US folder and by 2) editing the default.pat file within this folder (copying text directly from one of my old .pat files I want to add) using TextEdit. I can't seem to get this to work using either method.  I've read old posts about this but I'm still confused.  t read there was a second location where these files are stored too but I can't find it on my mac (using El Capitan OS X).  Am I going about this the right way in either case?  I was really hoping to just copy in .pat files to the folder(s) and go from there.  Thank you.

Roy Klein Gebbinck

Enter this in the Command Bar to find the right location:
(findfile "default.pat")

William Arens

Thanks, Roy.  Strangely, the path that shows up in my command line ( Users/WilliamArens/Library/Preferences/Bricsys/BricsCAD/V16x64/en_US/Support/default.pat ) doesn't even exist on my computer (or the folders are somehow hidden).  My folder structure is set up differently than the path shown, with no Library appearing under my user name at all, but Library/Preferences are found directly under my Mac hard drive, with no Bricsys/BricsCAD subfolders there.  I can only find a default.pat file under the path I noted in my original post, so I'm confused.  I appreciate your help though, as I was not aware of the "findfile" command.  

Tijs Vermeulen

By default the Library folder in your users directory is hidden.
In the finder, "Go" menu, use "Go to Folder..." and enter the literal path "Users/WilliamArens/Library/Preferences/Bricsys/BricsCAD/V16x64/en_US/Support/".

It can also be useful to create an alias to this folder ("Make Alias" in Finders context menu), then drag the alias to a more convention folder for regular use.

William Arens

Thanks Tijs and Roy!  I followed your directions to find the appropriate support folder and was able to get my hatch patterns imported (I dropped them in separately, rather than altering my default.pat file, so they show up under Custom hatches).  I have several stone hatch patterns that don't work for some reason (I previously used these in Autocad), but all other patterns I imported work fine in BricsCAD.  The stone patterns don't show up in the hatch patterns list at all in BricsCAD.  I downloaded a few new stone patterns from a website today and imported those into the support folder too but had the same results.  I'm happy that the others work but I hope to get a few stone patterns to work as well.  Thanks again.

Roy Klein Gebbinck

A .pat file has to comply with certain rules. I have included the most important rules in the Help text for my Online PatGenerator. It may be worth checking your files.

William Arens

 Thanks, Roy!  I will check that out.  Your help is much appreciated!