Hatch Pattern crashing in 2013

[SteveL~]

Hello,

I've got a recurring problem with using hatch patterns on 2013 that I wonder if anyone has come across;

Importing a new hatch pattern more than often than not results in Inventor winding up the memory usage on the PC to bursting point as it runs through "Calculating containment of profile areas" that seems to be called when previewing a hatch pattern.

The problem seems to be with more complex patterns (I'm using a stone wall type hatch - mountainledge.PAT is a prime example) and I think the issue is related to the scaling factor used. IF you remember to wind the scale up BEFORE trying to preview the pattern you can get away with a few minutes of down time, but if you leave the scale at 1 its goodnight!

It would be nice if Inventor could warn you (a bit like it does if you foolishly opt for a huge part array) becasue not only do you lose your inventor files but also any other unsaved app data as in my case my Dell M6500 PC just dies as all available memeory just gets swallowed up.

Perhaps I should try multiplying the co-ords in the PAT file by 25.4 as it could be that we use the poorer cousin of the good old inch system. Dare I speak it's name.... metric???

Cheers,

Steve

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! The Hatch Pattern seems to be too dense for Inventor to handle. The behavior is not specific to R2013. Can I ask where you get the hatch file? What is it supposed to look like? Are you trying to create a solid hatch?

Thanks!

[SteveL~]

Hi Johnson,

Thanks for looking at the post. 

I got the hatch pattern from a (real) stone supplier - www.coronado.com/hatch.swf and on the site there is a PDF of all the hatch patterns they supply and a ZIP file of them all there too.

Using a different hatch pattern (and remembering to increase the scale before previewing the pattern) I get what I'm trying to achieve (as per the attached screenshot), but if you dont remember to increase the scale the problem occurs and Inventor crashes out which seems odd as the hatch pattern I use most regularly itself is only 32kb - After lots of experimenting and crashes I found that the hatch in the attached screengrab would work OK when scaled at 20000, but times this scale factor might only be 1 or 2 etc.

Its difficult to know how much scale to apply before loading a new hatch pattern as they all seem to vary quite a bit, which makes it all a bit of guesswork without causing Inventor to crash. I've learned to do a complete save before attempting any hatching!

Regards

Steve

[johnsonshiue]

Steve,

Thanks for answering my questions! There is room for improvement in Inventor in terms of how it deals with extremely dense hatch. I will forward this case to development for further review.

Thanks!