Expert: Scott Cook - 2/8/2010

Question
I have an associated hatch in a drawing from a consultant. I can copy, past the ployline with assoc. hatch, move the datapoints, and even copyclip it into another drawing. However, the hatch is not in my library. It is coincidently named "gravel" but it is not the gravel in my library. If I match properties or try to change any properties of the hatch the hatch updates to MY version of gravel. How is autocad drawing the hatch if it is not in my library? If there is some sort of cache attached to the drawing, how can I access it so that I can get the code for this "native" hatch?

Answer
Hatches are stored in the drawing as anonymous blocks. There is no way for you to access them. You could get the consultant to send you the file, they are often added to the ACAD.PAT file.
If you use it, or add it to your ACAD.PAT file (you can use notepad to do this), do yourself a favor and call it something other than a name of a built-in pattern, like GRAVEL2 so that AutoCAD doesn't redefine it on someone else's computer when you share the file.