Quick RE-Hatching Tip

The hatching abilities of AutoCAD have come a long way sense I started with Release 10. Here is a quick tip for "redoing" hatches in release 2008.

I came across an unassociated hatch who's boundary had changed. There was a gap between the line and were the hatching ended. In the "old days" I would delete the hatch and create a new one. Not any more. I opened the Hatch Editor, selected the hatch pattern, then clicked the "REMOVE BOUNDARIES" button.

The screen highlights the boundaries of the selected hatch and instructs you to select the desired boundaries. Click the boundaries you want to remove. You can keep selecting as long as you want to.
Then, right click to ADD BOUNDARIES. The default setting is to "SELECT AREA" to hatch, but there are other choices too: select objects or remove boundaries. Either pick inside the area to rehatch, or select the object you want to hatch to. When done, right click or hit enter, then OK.

You have rehatched your hatch. In some cases it might be easier to delete the hatch then recreate it, but using this method allows you to keep the layer and pattern settings for the hatch.