Custom Hatch pattern name order

[3wood]

As you can see from the image below, the Custom Hatch Pattern list in Hatch Pattern Palette is not sorted by pattern name.

Is there a way to sort it in order? When the pattern files build up, it will be a bit hard to find the right one.

Thanks for response.

[ukdxb012]

Are all your custom hatches in one folder?

Also, I know this isn't really going to help but have you tried pulling the hatches locally, seem to recall this resolved this issue historically but means you don't have networked custom hatch patterns.

Alternatively you could consider adding each individual hatch to the standard AutoCAD PAT file and list alphabetically.

[3wood]

Thanks Duncan.

In my case, all custom hatch patterns are saved in the same local folder.

It seems most of the files are sorted by "Date Created" but still with one exception.

[sunghoon.lim]

Can you check your MAXSORT system variable ?

According to the following article, this variable sets the maximum number of items such as file names that are sorted alphabetically in dialog boxes.

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad-lt/downloads/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015/ENU/AutoCAD...

In AutoCAD 2015, the initial value is 1000 by default.

It looks somehow you have reached the initial max number of files in your opened document.

You can increase the value and see if it fixes the issue.

The range of the variable is between 0 and 32767.

[3wood]

Thanks for the response. I have tried changing MAXSORT value but the result is the same.

I only have less than 20 custome hatches, far lesss than default 1000 MAXSORT value so it is not this variable affects HATCH dialogue.

MAXSORT affects sorting result of a certain dialogues, such as layer manager, but unfortunately not the Custoe Hatch list

[pendean]

Duncan's last sentence is the only foolproof always-works fix.

[ukdxb012]

You could always stick your custom hatch patterns on a Tool Palette and arrange alphabetically and share this amongst users, just one other option 🙂

[sunghoon.lim]

Hi 3wood,

Are you using a network folder to store hatch pattern files?

I tried to reproduce the behaviour and finally figured out that the sorting doesn't work properly when I keep the pat files in network share folder (i.e. \\shared\FolderName) and added it to "Support File Search Path" in AutoCAD options.

When I copied those files to my local hard disk and change the "Support File Search Path"  accordingly, I don't have the issue any more.

You can try this out and see if it works for you.

I will report to AutoCAD dev team for this defect.

Thanks,

Hoon

[sunghoon.lim]

I also noticed that Windows share folder works OK, but NAS (Network attached storage) file server has this issue.

If you are using NAS to keep those pat files, you can move the files to Windows share folder.

Thanks,

Hoon

[3wood]

All my custom hatch pattern files are saved in a mobile driver folder, which has been added to my "Support File Search Path". 

I also tried following:

Cut and paste all .pat files to a certain folder and then added then this folder to "Support File Search Path", the result is as below:

Driver                                  Result

C: driver (hard driver)         Correct

😧 driver (hard driver)         Correct

F: driver (Mobile driver)     Incorrect (no matter whether the folder is shared or not shared)

K: driver (USB driver)        Incorrect 

So it looks the problem only happens in mobile driver.

[sunghoon.lim · Accepted solution]

Hi 3wood,

I did some more testings with my USB thumb drive and USB hard disk.

As you said the sorting order in custom hatch patch didn't work with my USB mobile thumb drive.

However, it did work for my USB hard disk.

I was a bit confused, but I noticed the difference between the two devices.

The file system of Thumb drive  is FAT32 while that of USB hard disk is NTFS.

Now I became to understand why it did work for my fixed hard disk (i.e. C: ), but didn't work my NAS network storage.

My C drive is formated in NTFS, but as long as I know, my Netapp NAS device doesn't use NTFS. (Maybe NFS ? )

Anyway, in summary, the sorting feature in custom hatch patch works well with NTFS (i.e. Sorted by file name)

But it doesn't work with non-NTFS format (i.e. Sorted by Date created)

I will report this different behaviour to AutoCAD dev team.

Thanks a lot,

Hoon