Hatch ability to fill complex shapes?

[Anonymous]

I used to be able to hatch most anything without problem. Now with Civil 3d 2011 anything more complex that a box or a circle AutoCAD will not find the boundary even when the quickpreview seems to find a boundary.

I've tried overlapping the lines and then trimming. I've tried extending to the other lines. I've tried setting the tolerance to 1/2". I've checked that the lines are snapped to endpoints and meet cleanly.

In testing I've found that sometimes it will find the boundary, and other times it will not even when nothing has changed?

Is anyone else noticing that they have to try multiple times and methods to get C3D 2011 to hatch correctly?

The attached file shows the different results (boundaries extracted from successful hatches) that I'm seeing, and sometimes can't find a boundary at all, sometimes it does. Seems to get different results when I regent and at different zooms (not sure if that's the correct terminology?).

Any Ideas.

[jmayo-EE]

If you explode the blocks and remove the common/overlapping lines from the block on the left, the hatch works perfectly.

Hatches have always been quirky with blocks, varying elevations and duplicate/overlapping objects. If everything is at a constant Z and closes perfectly with base acad linework, hatching can be flawless and painless.

[Anonymous]

Prefer not to explode the blocks. The lines not polylines are at 0 elevation or z=0. I have actually used 2009 to hatch areas and it worked perfectly fine although I do not have it anymore.

ACAD 2012 seems to not have any problems, well as long as I'm zoomed in.

Why does zooming seem to have such an effect on the hatch commands ability to find the boundary?

Thank you.

[jmayo-EE]

You need to be zoomed into the hatch extents. Don't know why. I just know hatch works better that way.

You can get the blocks back. Xplode the blocks, create the hatchs. Use Copybase and copy the hatch to the Windows clipboard. Undo until the block is restored. Paste the hatch back into the file.

[joeb]

The ability to grip-edit hatch is a godsend when certain figures/shapes don't cooperate. Just make a basic rectangle, hatch it, erase the rectangle and go to town on the hatch, adding/removing vertices, arcs, etc. as required.  Sometimes takes a couple extra minutes but saves a lot of headaches.