both of those work, and i knew about 'match properties' before but that seemed like the long way to do it. thank you very much for telling me about 'inherit properties'. i never knew what that feature did, but it's exactly what i was looking for. thanks again!
regarding autocad2002: to change hatch patterns, you have to go into the bhatch dialog box and reset properties. is there any way to pick on an existing hatch in a drawing, a hatch that's already been made, and have all the properties in the dialog box reset to match that particular hatch so...
