Populating the Custom Hatch Pattern Tab in AutoCAD

In this tutorial, we will show you how to add custom hatch patterns to the Custom tab in AutoCAD. This allows you to use your own custom hatch patterns within your designs.

Firstly, navigate to the Support Search File Path by selecting the Move Up button and moving to the top of the dialog box. You can find this by clicking on the Options button at the command prompt or right-clicking in the command area to bring up the Options dialog box.

Next, browse out to your Custom hatch folder and add it to the path. Within the Support File Search Path dialog box, select the files tab and pull out the Support File Search Path and select the Add button as shown.

To do this, you need to create a Hatch folder on your local C drive (or network folder) and name it 'CustomHatch'. Once created, you can add all your custom hatch patterns that you downloaded to this folder.

Now, let's add some custom hatch patterns to the Custom tab. Selecting the Custom tab will bring up the same dialog box with nothing in there as shown highlighted in yellow in the image on the right. Next, select the ellipses next to the pattern name to bring up the Hatch Pattern Palette with a Custom tab.

This will bring up the Hatch and Gradient dialog box as shown below. You can add your custom hatch patterns by selecting the 'T' for Settings option from the Ribbon or command prompt.

Once you have added your custom hatch patterns, you can give them a name with the format '*MYNAME, DESCRIPTION followed by the pattern as shown below in the EARTH example'. For example, you could use the following format: *EARTH, Earth Hatch Pattern'.

You can also edit the default PAT files that are installed with AutoCAD by using Notepad and adding your custom hatch pattern data at the end of the file. Hatch patterns are stored in a file named ACAD.PAT or ACADISO.PAT.

In recent times, I have had several people ask me about the custom hatch pattern tab in AutoCAD and how to populate that tab with their custom patterns. With these simple steps, you should be able to add your own custom hatch patterns to the Custom tab in AutoCAD.

wood hatch cad

Wood hatch cad