Hatch
The hatch command fills the region enclosing a picked point with a pattern. The boundary isn’t drawn first — it comes from whatever is already on the canvas, so four separate Lines meeting end to end enclose a region exactly as a closed Polyline does, and any closed shape sitting inside becomes an island the fill leaves alone.
Filling an area
- Type
hatchin the terminal or click the Hatch toolbar button (the swatch icon). - Click a point inside the region you want filled.
- The command stays active, so keep clicking to fill more areas — each pick creates its own
Hatchentity. - Press Enter, Space, or Escape when you’re done.
┌─────────────┐ ┌─────────────┐
│ │ │▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓│
│ ○ │ ---> │▓▓▓( )▓▓▓▓▓▓▓│ click inside the outer
│ │ │▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓│ boundary; the circle
└─────────────┘ └─────────────┘ is left as an islandKeyboard reference
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
Enter / Space | Finish the Hatch command |
Escape | Finish the Hatch command (same as Enter/Space) |
What can bound a region
Any mix of these entity types can form a boundary, in any combination, as long as they connect end to end with no gap:
- Line
- Arc
- Circle (its own closed boundary)
- Ellipse (closed, or an open elliptical arc as part of a larger loop)
- Polyline (open or closed) and Rectangle
- Spline CV / Spline Fit
Text, Multileader, and Dimension entities are never treated as boundaries.
Islands
Anything fully closed sitting inside the region you picked — a circle, a closed polyline, another hatch’s boundary — becomes an island: the fill stops at its edge and the island itself is left empty. Nest a closed shape inside another closed shape and the fill alternates, hole inside a fill inside a hole, following the same inside/outside rule at every level.
When a pick fails
If the point you clicked isn’t enclosed, or the boundary has a gap, the terminal explains why instead of silently doing nothing:
| Message | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ”no boundary found” | Nothing was hit in any direction from the picked point — there’s no boundary nearby at all |
| ”point is not enclosed” | A boundary exists nearby, but the shape it forms doesn’t contain the point you clicked |
| ”boundary is open” | The nearest boundary has a gap somewhere — trace it and check every join is exact |
| ”boundary too complex” | The boundary loop couldn’t be closed within the traversal limit — usually a tangle of overlapping entities |
The command stays active after a failed pick — read the message, fix the drawing or click somewhere else, and try again.
Choosing a pattern
Every new hatch starts out filled with ANSI31 (or whichever pattern the last hatch you edited used) — there’s no pattern picker before you draw. To use a different pattern:
- Select an existing hatch and open its Pattern field in the properties panel — this opens the pattern picker, a grid of named swatches grouped by where each pattern came from.
- Click a pattern to apply it — the fill updates immediately.
That selection also becomes the default for the next hatch you create with the hatch command, the same way picking a layer or color carries forward. So to hatch several new areas with a particular pattern: fill one area, set its pattern once, then keep hatching — every fill after that starts with that pattern already applied.
See Hatch Manager for uploading your own .pat pattern files and browsing the full library.
SOLID is a plain entry in the pattern list, not a separate checkbox or mode — pick it the same way you’d pick ANSI31 or any named pattern.
Properties
| Property | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pattern | The pattern name, from the shared pattern vocabulary (see Hatch Manager) |
| Pattern Scale | Scales the pattern’s line spacing — larger values space the pattern lines further apart |
| Pattern Angle | Rotates the pattern independently of the boundary |
| Origin X / Origin Y | Where the pattern’s own repeat is anchored, in drawing coordinates |
Moving, rotating, mirroring, or scaling a hatch carries its pattern placement along, so the fill stays aligned with the boundary — you don’t need to re-set the scale or angle after a transform.
Grip editing the boundary
A selected hatch grips its boundary the way a Polyline grips its vertices — one grip at every corner where two edges meet, and one at the middle of every edge (a closed loop like a hatched circle or ellipse grips at its four axis points instead).
| Grip | What it does |
|---|---|
| Corner | Moves that corner. A straight edge follows exactly; an arc refits itself to keep passing through both its neighbors; an ellipse or spline edge can only land on its own curve, so the corner snaps to the nearest point on it |
| Edge middle — line, ellipse, or spline edge | Slides the whole edge; the edges on either side are trimmed or extended to stay joined to it |
| Edge middle — arc edge | Bows the arc through the cursor instead of sliding it — both ends stay exactly where they were, and nothing else in the boundary moves |
| Center (whole hatch) | Activates Move for the entire hatch |
A drag preview shows the boundary as a dashed outline rather than a solid fill while you’re dragging — the original fill stays visible underneath until you release, since a preview can only paint on top of what’s there, never remove from it.
DXF — HATCH entity
Hatches import from HATCH entities: KulmanLab reads the boundary geometry along with the pattern name, scale, and angle (DXF group codes 70/41/52) — it does not read the pattern’s own line definitions written inline into the file. Instead, the pattern name is looked up in KulmanLab’s own pattern library (built-in defaults plus anything you’ve uploaded in Hatch Manager). A name that isn’t in your library falls back to ANSI31 so the drawing still reads as hatched, and a note is logged once.
Spline-bounded loops written by other applications (DXF boundary edge type 4) are not yet read.
Hatches do not currently export to DXF — use Export Manager’s .json format to keep a hatch when saving a drawing that includes one; the .dxf format leaves it out.