In Version 10.02 the Following Features Were Added to the Hatch Preview Window

HATCH PREVIEW

In version 10.02 the following features were added to the Hatch Preview Window:

· The Hatch Preview now displays the pattern as it will actually appear in the drawing given the current Hatch and Display scale.

· A new PrevSize (Preview Size) button has been added to the Hatch menu. You can specify the size of the Preview Window in pixels (Valid range is 50 - 500). This button also appears in the Linetype menu.

o This value is added to the dcadwin.ini file in your Windows directory:

[Hatch/Linetype Preview]

Size=200

· A new toggle for Scl2View (Scale to View) has been added to the Hatch/Pattern menu.

o If it’s On, the display scale for showing that pattern in the preview window will be according to the current display scale (3/4”, 1-1/2”, etc.). This is not the current Plot Scale, but the current screen scale (3/8” as show in the Status Window below):

This way you can see exactly how the hatch will look when applied to the drawing you are looking at. Below is the Preview Window and an area hatched in the Drawing Window. Note that they are scaled identically:

o If Scl2View is Off, another button called DispScal (Display Scale) appears.

· DispScal allows you to specify the display scale for showing that pattern in the preview window. This display scale is remembered on a pattern by pattern basis.

o To do this a new text file (dcadwin.pat.ini) has been added to the /SUP folder.

o When a new Display Scale is defined for any hatch pattern the corresponding pattern in the dcadwin.pat.ini file is updated.

o The last Scale and Angle selected are also saved to the .ini file, and used when the pattern is selected again, regardless of whether Scl2View or DispScale is the active option.

o Here are how a couple of patterns are defined in the default dcadwin.pat.ini file. The name of the patterns are within the brackets:

[earth]

Scale=200

Angle=0

Display Scale=10

[24x48til]

Scale=1

Angle=0

Display Scale=10

· IMPORTANT!: The “10” refers to the scale in the list of your current DataCAD scales. In this case shown below that’s the 10th scale down on the list, or ¼”:

Changing the Display Scale From the .INI File

You can change the Display Scale from within the dcadwin.pat.ini file if you wish, too. Just open the file in a plain text editor like Windows Notepad and manually change the scale. In this example you could change the Display Scale of “10” to something else, like “20”:

[earth]

Scale=200

Angle=0

Display Scale=10

Note that you could change the actual Scale and Angle of the Hatch pattern, here, too.

How the .INI File Works With the .PAT File

· DataCAD comes with a dcadwin.pat.ini file to cover the standard DataCAD hatch patterns.

o If you add a new hatch pattern to your dcadwin.pat file, its definition will only be added to the dcadwin.pat.ini file when you make a change to the pattern settings, such as Scale, Angle or DispScal.

· The order of the hatch pattern names in the dcadwin.pat.ini file does not need to match the order of the hatch patterns in the .PAT file. DataCAD searches for the pattern definitions in both files by name.