Q. I cannot get hatch to work using IntelliCAD

I am a architectural drafter and want to hatch the elevation of buildings. I am using IntelliCAD but hatching is not working. Can you provide some guidelines?

A. Use polylines and a user defined hatch pattern

Hatching has always been somewhat difficult to do in AutoCAD (and now in IntelliCAD). Users often get the line spacing either too close (resulting in a solid block of colour) or too wide (resulting in no hatch showing). Both AutoCAD and IntelliCAD programs now provide a BHATCH command which attempts to create a boundary and allows a preview before you perform the actual hatch. The dialog boxes used in BHATCH are complicated. There is an easier way. We simply hatch a polyline.

1. Use the PLINE command and draw a polyline around the area that you want to have hatched. Remember to make this an accurate polyline and use OSNAP to get to (say) the intersections of the roof and walls. 

2. Type the HATCH command in full. Choose the & symbol (for a line hatch pattern - a user defined pattern). Angle will be zero, space between the lines can be set by picking 2 points in the area that you want to hatch at about the distance apart that you want the lines to be. You could also type the value directly (say 200mm). Cross hatch would be set to No.

3. Finally select the polyline at the hatch should occur with correct spacing.

4. You can erase the polyline after the hatching has been generated. Zoom in and issue the ERASE command.