Explore the concept of pocheting, a method used to visually represent a cut floor plan of a building in AutoCAD. This article provides detailed instructions on how to create a solid hatch within the walls of a building design to differentiate solid elements from less solid ones, enhancing the readability of the floor plan.
Key Insights
- The process of pocheting is used in AutoCAD to represent a floor plan cut at a certain height, providing a top-down view of a building layout. It differentiates between solid and non-solid elements for better understanding of space.
- In pocheting, a solid hatch is created only within the walls of the building design. This is because the walls, unlike doors and windows, are visually solid and need to be distinctly represented in the floor plan.
- While creating a hatch, it is essential to select the entire region to be pocheted on the screen to avoid errors. Once the hatch is created, it should be sent back in the draw order to ensure it doesn't obstruct other design elements and the lines print on top of the hatch.
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In this video, we are going to talk about pocheting, or what happens when we cut a floor plan. In order to do this, let's switch first to the A pattern layer, A pattern, and let's talk about what it means to so-called cut a floor plan.
What we're seeing on the screen is a representation of a building, and in this case, the building is cut at four feet, six inches, or roughly at that height, in a horizontal cut. It's almost like we took the top of the building off and are looking at it from above, but this means that certain elements need to be represented differently. You might have heard of a building section, and we cover that in later AutoCAD courses, but that's a cut through a vertical slice, and we're looking from the side. A floor plan is based on the same concept, and in this case, we want to represent what is very solid and what is not so solid so that we can get a good understanding of the space. When we cut, we know that we cut through the walls, especially, and walls in real life are solid and cannot be seen through.
That's not the same with the doors and the windows, so when we make our hatch pattern for poche, we want to be very careful about where we choose. Poche is not always necessary in all floor plans, but you'll see it on our handout as a gray kind of fill in between the lines of the walls. This helps the plan reader understand what is very solid in plan and what is not so solid.
Now, you might be saying, well, we cut through the glass, and we cut through the doors, why aren't those poche'd? Well, they're not visually as solid as our walls, and poche is not a real-world element. These might be wood-framed walls. We're cutting through studs, and drywall, and all sorts of things.
We don't need to draw all of that. We need it symbolically. So, in this case, we will use a solid hatch only within the walls.
So, we have our A pattern selected as our current layer, and now we simply need to go to hatch. We're going to choose the solid hatch, and we're going to pick points. Now, our first instinct might be to zoom in and easily pick this section, right? We make a bigger region so that it's easier to pick.
That makes perfect sense, but be careful. You might be tempted to come over here and pick this section. When I pick, it may select the objects, as it seems to have done here, or it might give you an error. The reason why it's giving you an error is that the hatch tool is very visual, and AutoCAD works best when all the geometry you need is visible on the screen.
So, you will notice that this hatch region was much larger than what was visible on the screen. AutoCAD will work better if you show the entire region when selecting a space. So, go ahead, go around the floor plan, and make sure you choose every single wall section that is fully enclosed.
I'll use Zoom Extents to ensure I have everything and then close my hatch creation. Now, we have a hatch that represents where the wall was cut by our horizontal slice. There are a couple more things I want to do before we continue with this project.
First, I want to pick the hatch by zooming in and choosing it. Then, I want to right-click, select Draw Order, and send it back. Now, we have a couple of reasons for doing this.
One is to make sure the hatch doesn't get selected very often. We don't need it that much. But two, when we print this drawing, we want the lines to print on top of the hatch.
That's what we talk about in draw order. What is drawn on top and what is drawn on the bottom is very important, especially when you're working with different colors. This hatch will print at a color where the lines will print as black.
So, let's right-click, select Draw Order, send to back, use Zoom Extents, and press CTRL S to save. The final step is to change our current layer and then hide the APAT layer. So, I'm going to come up here.
I'll choose Layer 0 for now, then I'll click the dropdown one more time and hit the light bulb next to APAT. That will hide all of the geometry on that layer.
Now, we can continue working without worrying about accidentally clicking the hatch, deleting the hatch, or just in general, it getting in the way of any of our modeling. Now that we have identified the doors, windows, and thick walls by adding a Poché hatch, we can start the next section by creating our deliverable sheet or our PDF sheet A2.1. See you there.
