How Merge Hatches?

sbcad

Is it possible to merge hatches or polylines to get one entity?

ALANH

You can Group objects but not 1 entity, if its a hatch then may be able to get a boundary pline of hatch. Just that HB & BH commands.

Anthony Apostolaros

You could select a bunch of polylines, lines, arcs, and circles, and use the Trim command to trim them to each other until they form a continuous path that could be made into a polyline. Then select them all again and use the Join command to join all that into a single polyline.

And you can join a polyline to another one or to a line with the Chamfer command. Just set both chamfer distances to 0.

Tom Foster

Or Fillet instead of Chamfer, advantage that the typed command is just 'F' instead of 'CHA'. Set to 0 just the same.

Anthony Apostolaros

As far as merging hatches, the only way I know of is to re-create the hatch boundaries for each hatch using HatchB. Then you can merge the resulting polylines into one polyline, and hatch that polyline using the Select Entities option.

But I think it should be easy to create a custom command that merges hatches. Maybe someone has done that, at the Swamp or one of the many other sites devoted to customizing.

And isn't there a built-in or Express command that creates a single polyline from a selection set of lines, arcs and polylines? My memory is that you just have to select the entities and then click inside the areas you want enclosed by the merged polyline. But I can't remember what that command is. I don't think there is such a command. I think I was remembering a VectorWorks command that I used many years ago -- Combine Into Surface.

David Waight

If you use the link below, It is a Lisp that will merge hatches (even different patterns into one complete hatch.

https://autocadtips1.com/2011/11/23/autolisp-merge-hatches-join-hatches/

Anthony Apostolaros

Thanks for that link, David. That custom command works very nicely for hatches that don't overlap, even if they're not contiguous. When they do overlap, I find that the overlapped area becomes a void in the merged hatch. I can't figure out anything to do about that.

The merged hatch takes its pattern, scale, and layer from the selected source hatch. But its other properties, such as color and lineweight, are not taken from that source. They're whatever's active when the command is executed, the same as when creating a new hatch. With some study, I should be able to correct that.