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Dynamic Hatch In IntelliCAD

Dynamic Hatch 1.0 uses IntelliCAD 98's HATCH command and improves on it by adding a dialog box interface, similar to the one used in AutoCAD R14.

It turns the cumbersome "command prompt" style hatch command into a dynamic interface that IntelliCAD users with AutoCAD experience miss.

Dynamic Hatch's dialog interface to hatching in IntelliCAD. The hatch pattern preview makes visual sense of cryptic hatch pattern names.

Dynamic Hatch is a manual installation and is clearly explained in an accompanying document file included in the Zip archive. The source LISP and dialog control language files are open so you can modify settings for file locations if required.

You can autoload Dynamic Hatch by adding a line (load "dh") to the end of your ICAD.LSP file. If this file doesn’t exist you can copy ICAD.LS_  (included in dhatch.zip, below)) to the "C:\Program Files\IntelliCAD 98\" folder (or where ever IntelliCAD 98 is installed on your machine) and rename it ICAD.LSP.

Once the AutoLISP file is loaded it is activated by the command DHATCH or the alias DH.

Dynamic Hatch is a very nice dialog interface to the hatching task and provides a very useful hatch pattern preview to make sense of cryptic hatch pattern names. This is the kind of enhancement that should be part of the base product and probably will be before long.

Also included in the archive is a button bitmap called DHATCH.BMP for users who want to add this to their toolbars. Dynamic Hatch 1.0 will not work for users that have modified their ICAD.PAT file. It is designed only for IntelliCAD 98 hatch patterns. It was not designed for, nor will it work with AutoCAD. When picking the boundary points the polyline options – such as Close, Undo, etc. - are not available and will cause an error if used.

Dynamic Hatch does not create associative hatches nor will it edit them in any way.

Version 1.2 has recently been released and is now available for download.

• The major improvement is the option to pick an area to "flood fill".
• The polyline command that is used to pick a boundary for hatching now supports the command prompt options such as "Close, Undo, etc.".
• I also solved a few minor bugs and annoyances. Like you will notice that the command no longer gives you an error if the drawing has no objects instead it will now alert you if you try to "Preview" or Apply the hatch without a selection set to hatch. It also no longer deletes the last object in the drawing if you try to preview without selecting a selection set for hatching.
• And finally the false reference to a pattern name "file://11111001" at the end of the pattern list is gone.

Dynamic Hatch 1.0 is freeware, courtesy of author David Trotz.

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