Hello again,
Is there a way to create custom hatching? We use a lot of timber in our drawings, and I would like to be able to show end-grain on my drawings where it would be a cut through a piece of timer.
Hello,
Yes and the www will give you information on all rules how to create a .pat file.
Makes sense but honestly - why will you invent the wheel again? Other had the same goal, created a timber or wood hatch pattern and offer it now for free in the internet. Just search for wood / timber / wood grain hatch pattern for cad. It need to be a .pat file to work in QCAD. Download the pattern, copy it in your QCAD folder below “patterns/imperial or metric”, restart QCAD and you should be ready to go …
Thanks Husky, I’ll give it a go!
I’ve never tried this but I did a Google search for creating a .pat file and this came up. It certainly looks pretty cool.
Husky,
So I did a forum search to see how to import a .pat into QCAD (because I didn’t see that you just mentioned how to do it above 
) and a saw a post from 2010 from Andrew saying .pat isn’t supported and the hatches are just .DXF files. I’m assuming something changed since then in the way QCAD works with hatches? Just curious about the history behind this.
@ ryancousins,
oh my god - I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast and now you are asking what changed in the last 10 years? 
Yes, you are right. The “old days QCAD” was only able to handle dxf hatches - now we are able to deal with .pat as it should be. 
Ha Ha my memory is terrible, too. In my brain being able to load a dxf and have that automatically tiled into a hatch seems like the intuitive way to do it (especially after looking at how the .pat file is created!) but I imagine there must be reasons the .pat files are a superior and a standard for CAD programs. At least there are lots of pre-existing files out there because I don’t think I’d want to make my own!
A forum member, John Hyslop, wrote a nice little stand alone basic hatch pattern Tool. Maybe you like to check it out. It is … wow!
Crap, now I remember seeing that mentioned a couple weeks ago. Proof of my horrible memory. Thanks, it looks great!