Fixing Your Broken Concrete Hatch Pattern

I hope that you noticed something in my previous blog post about fixing holes in hatches that didn’t have anything to do with that topic. In fact, this is a very common issue that plagues AutoCAD Civil 3D users. As you can tell by the title of the post, it is the fact that AutoCAD and the OOTB (Out Of The Box) concrete hatch pattern seem to not get along very well.
Sidenote: I think that the problem still persists on other custom concrete patterns as well.

Concrete Hatch Pattern OOTB

As seen below, The issue seems to be only one triangle that is repeated.

Broken Hatch Pattern1

Here is a good rule of thumb when it comes to AutoCAD. The further away your drawing elements are from the “Origin” (0,0,0) the more weird stuff tends to happen in your drawing. And since Civil 3D works in real-world coordinates, our drawings are far away from the origin. I live in the Denver Colorado area, so my drawings are not only far from zero, zero but also the 3rd zero as we are a mile high…

Broken Hatch 1

Luckily, there is an easy solution to this. You can give hatches a new origin while leaving your UCS alone.

Simply select the hatch so that the “Hatch Editor” contextual tab is shown, Then click on “Set Origin” as shown below and then click on a point that is within the area where your drawing objects are located. I would suggest using a common point as the new origin. Something like the corner of a building. That way if you have two areas that are hatched separately but are right next to each other, they will have the same pattern.

Broken Hatch 2

Enjoy!

Broken Hatch Pattern 3