Automated way to count the dots in a hatch?

[georgi_manovski]

Hello there my name is Georgi Manovski and I’m landscape architecture student. I have to make bushes on a autocad, put a hatch with crosses in them in scale 0.05 and count how many dots are there in each bush. That represents how many seeds I need to be using in the project. Is there a way to select the hatch and look at how many crosses are in the particular hatch or do I have to count them manually?

[Kent1Cooper]

Make a COPY of the Hatch off to the side somewhere, EXPLODE it, and each cross will become two Lines.  Select them, and the Properties palette will tell you how many there are -- divide that by 2.  You may need to make allowance for partials [you could have part of one along an edge of the outline, which could result in only one Line], and decide how much of a cross qualifies as needing to be counted.

That assumes you are using AutoCAD's CROSS pattern or some other that makes crosses in the same way.  If you're using something else, after Exploding, check how many elements there are in one cross.  If you use the DOTS pattern, each of the resulting dots after Exploding will be one Line of zero length.

[davinatkins]

Alternatively, make a rectangle of a known size (like 10 x 10) and then hatch it. Count the hatches in that area and you will know the hatch density (say 20 hatches per 100 sqft). Next, hatch all of the bushes at once. Check the properties of the new hatch at it will tell you the total area. Multiply that by the known density and you're done.