By Dennis Collin
AutoCAD’s hatching function is a common topic of discussion for many users. This can be trying to get areas to enclose with a pattern fill, adjust the scale of a pattern or adjusting the hatch boundary and getting the infill to update. One question I was asked recently was how to separate a series of hatching that was grouped together. A careless answer would be to explode it! Anyone who has attended my AutoCAD training courses could predict my reaction to that response!
When hatching several areas in one operation, AutoCAD will by default group all the elements together. Selecting one area will select all its neighbours, but what if one of those areas requires a different pattern? The answer is to use the separate hatch function within the hatch editor. Separating the hatches will make each area independent which can then be assigned a different pattern, colour, layer or scale as appropriate.