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Rethink Hatch / Fill Patterns

Rethink Hatch / Fill Patterns

Isn't it time to devise something a little more modern for patterns? Hard to believe that the 35 year-old PAT file format is still the "technology" of choice for this. Would love to see a modern pattern creator that could do any kind of pattern. Including: rectilinear, random, and especially radial. It is just silly that we have to use model lines and arrays or material hacks to simple brick arches or radial floor patterns. 

 

A new pattern technology and editor please... 

111 Comments
Anonymous
Not applicable

Currently this is only available as an add-in.  While I do have the licenses for one of these, the version I like is stuck in 2015 with no knowledge when a 2016 or 2017 version will be available.  For now, this is not a big deal as I have a license for 2015, but next year this will not be the case when 2018 is installed. (Only 3 versions of Revit is installed on workstations)

 

Revit should have it's own pattern creator and not rely on programmers that may be too busy on actual projects instead of modifying their apps that so many people have come to rely on.

 

Geez...Autodesk bought a waste of an add-in called Siteworks, how about purchasing Hatch22 and make a lot of people happy?

Tags (5)
lionel.kai
Advisor

Or even just being able to export patterns from the model (the same way you can export shared parameters), without having to result to the "export to .dwg twice" trick, would be helpful. 🙂

Anonymous
Not applicable
jrfrost
Advocate

It should be much easier to create a custom fill pattern. In the "Modify Pattern Properties", you should basically be able to draw the pattern you want repeated inside a specified box size.

Tags (2)
arek_keshishian
Advocate

Hell Yes!

 

 

patrick_parker
Explorer

There is no intuitive way to create a custom pattern in Revit.

Currently if I want to create a .pat file, I would need to edit a text file, calculate parameters for individual lines by mathematically plotting their coordinates for every unique occurrence.   

For example, the matrix below is what it takes to create rectangular tile:

0,0,0,0,12.125,24,-0.125
0,0,12,0,12.125,24,-0.125
90,0,0,0,24.125,12,-0.125
90,24,0,0,24.125,12,-0.125

Trying to create organic pattern like stone would take countless days. We should be able to draw a pattern in a predefined region to generate our offsets for us. 

 

Tags (2)
damo3
Advisor

Please do a search prior to posting ideas. It will ensure votes are all going to the same idea and will therefore move to the top. A simple search for "pattern" will find this... http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/built-in-fill-pattern-creator/idi-p/6370652

 

 

jkidder
Collaborator

I agree this would be a great addition.  Incorporating Hatch 22 would be a great way to do it.  Otherwise, I'd suggest renaming the radio option currently named "Custom" to "Import" and adding a new radio option called "Custom" or "Sketch"  This would have the option to create (for a new pattern) or modify (for an existing or imported pattern) using special sketch lines in a sketch area that would appear to the right or left of the pattern dialog (similar to how the preview window appears when editing type parameters).  Ideally, there would also be a preview button that would take you out of sketch mode and show the pattern tiled, to help quickly identify any mistakes made in the sketch.

Bfglunz
Participant

This is so true. Its time to evolve this portion of the technology so that ADSKLIBs can store patterns! The ability to do this alone would be a huge leap!

deartotoro
Explorer

Yes. I think about that the Hatch pattens is most useful for our daily design work. 

sasha.crotty
Community Manager
Status changed to: Under Review

Thanks for your submission and votes on this idea! We are evaluating where this request falls into our roadmap and will provide an update when we have made a decision.

 

The Factory

AKingslayer
Advocate

At least add some more hatches to the OOTB install, and the ability to adjust the scale of non-linear hatches like concrete, earth, gravel, etc.  As of now, I have to go into Autocad create several different scaled versions of a hatch like "concrete" then import the dummy drawing into REVIT.   

Anonymous
Not applicable

@sasha.crotty....so it took a post from @Paul_F_Aubin to get our posts after my original to get merged....under Paul's of course.

 

But I think his idea is a bit different than mine and Patrick's..  Mine was using existing add-ins, Patrick's I think didn't know the add-in existed already, another reason it needs to be built in.  Paul's is a total overhaul of the fill pattern process allowing for more options for patterns that are not angle/line based...thus an entirely new pattern concept.  Might have to take a look at the competition on that one...

 

 

lionel.kai
Advisor

@AKingslayer That seems like a lot of extra work (using AutoCAD) - all you have to do is change the "Import scale" when creating the Fill Pattern in Revit (assuming you have a .pat file for it - see "export" in the posts above). Being able to "tweak" the scale of an existing "custom" pattern (without having to re-import from the .pat file) would be VERY helpful.

 

@Paul_F_Aubin & @patrick_parker They probably chose the .pat file format because there are already tons of patterns available (existing office standards; or a quick web search should find ALMOST anything you'd need) - no need reinvent the wheel or go through a lot of work making a bunch of patterns available in a new format (when the software was young). That said, we COULD use more options now...

 

@Anonymous I've noticed that they tend to put the older thread under the newer thread (instead of the other way around, as I think it should be). So in many cases it "rewards" those who don't search for similar ideas first. Though sometimes the earliest post isn't the one who communicates (or "markets") the idea best. Also, in this case I find it odd that Autodesk has merged various SPECIFIC ideas into a more GENERAL one (especially since recently they've been breaking up many other GENERAL idea threads into various detailed ones). Another problem when the threads get merged is that the responses and comments get meshed together & it's sometimes hard to follow who's responding to what. Also, the "subject" of the merged idea gets lost (the ACTUAL idea - and is not often repeated in the posts themselves, which is usually just a description of how the idea would work - such as yours, for example).

Anonymous
Not applicable

Hee Hee....as for the title... @Paul_F_Aubin, I thought this was Revit, not AutoCAD?!  Revit has Fill Patterns, Autocad has Hatch Patterns.  Perhaps this idea was meant for the AutoCAD Idea station??

 

LOL....<Hide>

Rab_i
Advocate

Lately I have started using 'Hatch Kit"! I am quite happy with the program's approach and the beauty of discovering pattern. I was assigned a task to make a Herring bone pattern using 59"x9" tiles. I tried Hatch22 and wasn't successful. HatchKit on the other hand helped me create the pattern with basically two lines placed strategically that are 59" and 9" long respectively. This pattern seemed easy to being with but I quickly discover it was quite difficult to think of as repeating pattern. HatchKit provided with a live preview of the pattern because of what I was able to comprehend how herring bone patterns are made.

 

The intuitive discovery of pattern and the ease of converting dxf files into Hatch pattern is fantastic. I recommend Autodesk should look into HatchKit to incorporate it into Revit.

DanielRosenberg
Contributor

It would be nice to have a native drafting and model hatch pattern wizard built into Revit. 

Anonymous
Not applicable

In the AutoCAD days we could create Hatch patterns with easy, now its quite a task to export a .pat file and use that for Model and drafting pattern types.

 

I mean quite complex hatch patterns, such as a carpeted tile (dots and squares.)

 

It would be great if we could have this function to customize a bit more, in the hatch properties.

 

Thanks

andydandy
Contributor

This should be merged with this idea (which is already under review):

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/rethink-hatch-patterns/idi-p/6489965

tropitech
Enthusiast

The current way to make fill patterns by .pat file is ridiculously difficult, unintuitive, tedious and error prone. I should be able to draw a group of lines (or even use a profile/detail component) and then apply it to a new filled region type and have it automatically and nominally arrayed throughout my filled region boundaries.

Tags (3)

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