Vector for ACAD is a fill utility much superior to the hatch command. Is there anything like this for Intellicad?

I don't think so. Why do you consider Vector superior to the native hatch command?

The memory demands of ICAD hatching have slowed my computer to a crawl. ICAD help even suggests saving the hatching until the last because of memory demands.

I have a 1.8 gig processor and 512 Megs of ram. I did try increasing the paging size from 384 to 766 but I don't yet know whether that will help.

If you are using the bhatch command with true solid hatch you should not have a problem with performance, my experience is the entities produced are quite lightweight. If you are using the old hatch command to produce pseudo-solid (very dense line) patterns (like in Acad 13 and before) you will have a performance problem.

I'm pretty sure I'm using the bhatch command. I am selecting INSERT then HATCH and then it says _bhatch on the command line. Maybe I'm not setting up the hatching parameters correctly for solid fill. I've filled maybe 5% of what I need to do on this drawing and the rendering is incredible slow.

However, Intellicad HELP says:

NOTE Hatch patterns are memory intensive and can take a considerable amount of time to draw and display. To improve performance, add hatching as one of the last steps when you create a drawing, or insert hatches on a separate layer that you can freeze as you continue to work on your drawing.

Do you get the hatch dialog box this way? If so you can select solid as hatch pattern directly. If you dont, you should type bhatch on commandline instead.

The quoted text is outdated (as is large parts of the help file).

Yes I get the hatch dialog box, and I have selected solid hatch.

Under the Pattern Properties tab, Scale is set at 1, Associative is checked, Hatch Tolerance is set at 0.23... These are all default settings.

I am using PE Ver. 4.0.27

Thanks again for your input.

I noticed that each time I do the hatch I need to re=select "solid" even though it is selected when I open the dialog box.
Otherwise it hatches with lines.

Davep

I think you may have indentified the problem. I tried a new fill being sure to first select "solid", and it fills in immediatly on the "print preview" instead of slowly filling in as if it was drawing one line at a time.

Apparently my other fills are actually very fine hatching that used a lot of memory.

I'll redo the rest of the map and let you know tomorrow.

thank you

davep

Yes, you are absolutely correct. Each time I fill a polygon I have to reset the pattern. Even if it appears that solid is selected I think you have to either reselect solid or maybe even select a true hatch and then reselect solid to make it stick. I'm not really sure about that, although in one instance it appeared to be set on solid under the pattern tab, but then filled in with the zillion line hatch to appear as solid.

thanks again, it looks like I'll be able to complete this project in ICAD instead of switching to Arcview.