Area Fill as Crosshatch

[pdwispe]

Is there any possibilty to use the "Concrete" Area Fill Type as an CrossHatch Style.

Currently I need for a customer some mixed materials in Section Views, as there are aluminium, steel, glass and wood panels, these Crosshatch Styles I can cover with the Xhatch.chx and Xhatxh.chx types of Crosshatch Style.

But in a lot of cases I need to add concrete walls to these Sections and I cannot change a Crosshatch Style to a Area Fill.

Has anyone already add a Area Fill to one of the .chx files?


Many thanks,

Currently my workaround is to create a Sketch of that concrete wall in that Section and add a Area to this, but I would rather create these wallls as Solids...

 

[jerry1423]

You should be able to do it:

Insert > crosshatch > toggle area fill "on" > follow dialog box

 

[hudson888]

Without reselecting the boundary I think that the answer is no.

Cheers

Hudson

 

[JohnRBaker]

The best that you can do is select the Crosshatch object and 'Hide' it, then go back in and use Area Fill to add the Concrete pattern in it's place.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Design
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[hudson888]

John,

Why hide if you don't require it? I would probably have deleted the crosshatch. Unless this somehow provides me the opportunity to avoid reselecting the boundary I don't see the advantage in keeping it. Is there something that I'm missing?

yours curiously,

Hudson

 

[JohnRBaker]

If the Crosshatch was created automatically as the result of a Drafting Section View, you can't delete the individual crosshatch areas.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Design
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[hudson888]

John,

Now I get what you mean. You could on occasion turn off hatching the the view depending on the circumstance as well.

Cheers

Hudson

 

[JohnRBaker]

Yes, but that impacts the entire view, but if you only wish to change one or two areas from Crosshatch to Area Fill, this is the only real choice that we have at the moment

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Design
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[hudson888]

That would be the circumstance that it would depend upon

 

[pdwispe]

It is as you explain John, I have a Solid sectioned in a View so created automaticly
So the idea to add a Concrete Style to one of the .chx-files is that an option, or impossible to do?

Many thanks again...

 

[hudson888]

pdwispe,

I'll answer for John and he can correct me if I'm wrong.

There are basically two ways that you can generate cross-hatching in a drawing view. The first way is by adding a section view and having automatic cross-hatching turned on with or without assembly cross-hatching as required. The Second way is to use the (manual) cross-hatching function to define a boundary to be filled with cross-hatching. The function for adding cross-hatching manually also caters for area fill, whereas the automatic version as applied by the section view does not include any area fill types.

Area fill and cross-hatching are different and separate ways of rendering a pattern over a defined area. If you manually applied the cross hatching in a view you might as well delete it and replace it with a new manually defined area fill. If you automatically cross-hatched in a section view and you want to apply an area fill rather than a hatching style then you need to do so manually. If there is existing hatching in the area you may either hide it or change the view style settings to turn it off. Which of these last two options you would choose to use depends on whether there are other hatched elements in the view that you wish to retain.

Cheers

Hudson

 

[pdwispe]

Hi Hudson,

thanks for the reply,

I am fully aware that there are two different types of hatching: Crosshatch and Area Fill, but the question in this thread is wheater anyone of you added a Area Fill Type to the Unigraphics .chx-files, these .chx-files are the definition files of the standard Crosshatch Styles that you and me can choose from to edit a Crosshatch Style...

This because I create these "Walls" as Solids and Sectioning these in a View with either Assembly Crosshatching On or Off, creates a type of Cross Hatch which I can modify by using the Crosshatch Styles defined in xhatch.chx and xhatch2.chx files, these contain Hatch styles like Steel, Brass/Copper,Aluminium,...
These Types are not what I want I need for one component in this view, I need to havesomething like the Type of Area Fill "Concrete" for one Component in this Section View.
Other hatched elements needs to be remained as Aluminium and steel Crosshatch Style, easy to do these Components.

Hope I explaing it correctly.

Thanks

 

[JohnRBaker]

Traditional Crosshatching is based on various arrangements and fonts of LINES (which is why they even use terms like 'cross' and 'hatch'). The .chx files uses a man-editable scheme to define line-based 'crosshatching'.

Now in the case of an 'Area Fill', it's based on a totally different scheme, more like pattern-replication. Unfortunately the data used to define this 'pattern' is hard-coded into the software so there is nothing available to be edited by the user.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Design
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[hudson888]

There are only two supplied .chx files shipped with NX they are called xhatch.chx and xhatch2.chx. Each contains a definition that seems to consist of lines ONLY and in regular repeatable patterns. I have never heard of anyone editing those files to add hatching types but don't suppose it would be physically impossible to do so. I opened a couple up in a text editor to look and they are indeed just ACSII files.

Area fills on the other hand are repeatable patterns of irregular shapes and do not appear to be contained in any files equivalent to the .chx which you can access to chop and change.

I know that maybe the answer still isn't what you'd hoped for but it may be just as well to save you some time.

Best Regards

Hudson

 

[pdwispe]

Think this will be a dead end Topic for me...

Many thanks,

 

[Alderfek]

I wouldnt give up on the idea. At EFC, the Design Group made the decision to use the xhatch2 patterns as 'alternates' for some of the area fills so that we could stay away from the problems that arose from using them. Herringbone we use for wood, Grass for concrete/plaster. As long as you get approval and document your changes, dont see why you couldnt do it also.

Kirk

 

[hudson888]

When all said and done a normal crosshatch with a very close spacing is for all intents and purposes and area fill.

Best Regards

Hudson

www.jamb.com.au

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