Geotechnical Hatch Styles

Traditionally complex hatch combinations may be used to represent different geologies; often the standard AutoCAD hatch patterns are not flexible enough. A geotechnical hatch may be made up from multiple overlaid hatch patterns each with its own colour, scale and rotation.

The Geotechnical Hatch Manager allows precise geotechnical hatches to be created from multiple hatch overlays. When rendering log strips or profile areas the geotechnical hatch that matches the stratum banding will be used.

The Hatch Manager also controls the colour of the 3D borehole cylinders and strata surfaces for each banding.

The OpenGround Cloud Extension for AutoCAD Civil 3D is shipped with a number of AutoCAD patterns for geology together with the standard geotechnical hatch styles for AGS legend codes. New geotechnical hatch styles are automatically created when accessing project with new stratum codes not encountered before. The Geotechnical Hatch Manager can be used to edit and refine these automatically created styles.

Command: HBSI_HatchManager

From the OpenGround Cloud ribbon click Hatches to display the Geotechnical Hatch Manager

The Geotechnical Hatch Manager is divided into two elements, at the top is the Geotechnical Hatches grid, at the bottom is the Hatch Editor.

The Geotechnical Hatch grid lists all of the geotechnical hatches defined and works like any standard OpenGround Cloud grid, with the column headers being used for sorting and filtering the data.

• Filter by project: When checked On, the geotechnical hatch grid only lists the hatches for the strata in the current project. Check Off to see all geotechnical hatches defined in the system.
• Hatch Scale Factor: Can be used to scale up all geotechnical hatch patterns within a drawing. For instance, if your hatch patterns are designed to repeat correctly over one AutoCAD unit, but your log strips are five units across, set the Hatch scale factor to 5 to ensure the Hatch patterns fits correctly
• Add: Click Add to create a new geotechnical hatch style, the Hatch Editor can then be used to create the new style
• Copy: Select a Geotechnical Hatch style and then click Copy to make a complete duplicate of the selected style, the Hatch Editor will be updated with the copied information enabling modifications where necessary.
• Remove: Select a Geotechnical Hatch from the grid and click Remove to delete the Geotechnical Hatch.

Hatch Editor

• Name: Enter the name for the geotechnical hatch style; any strata with the matching name will be hatched using the style.
• Category: Enter a category for the style, categories can be used to find and filter on.
• Colour: Pick a colour to use for the strata in 3D borehole and strata surfaces
• Protected: Toggle On Protected to ensure only the creator of the Hatch or the System Administrator can edit the geotechnical hatch style; unprotected styles can be edited by any user.
• Description: Enter a description for the geotechnical hatch style.
• Material: Strata can be represented by materials which can be added from AutoDesk Civil 3D Materials Browser.
• Hatch Editor Grid: The Hatch Editor Grid is used to add hatch overlays to the geotechnical hatch style, each overlay will be represented as a separate row in the grid.
• Hatch: Select the AutoCAD hatch pattern to use for the overlay hatch
• Colour: Pick the colour to use for the overlay hatch
• Scale: Set the scale for the overlay hatch
• Angle: Set the rotation for the overlay hatch
• Add: Click Add to add an additional overlay to the current geotechnical hatch style
• Remove: Click Remove to delete the selected overlay from the current geotechnical hatch style
• Order arrows: The icons can be used to change the display order for the hatch overlays. Hatches at the top of the list will be displayed first.

Materials

The Geotechnical Hatch Manager allows for assigning materials as well as colours to represent strata in the 3D geotechnical objects, these include the 3D boreholes, surfaces and fences.

Materials is a function within AutoCAD and will need to be assigned to a materials library and saved as a Drawing Template before they can be added to strata within the Hatch Manager. Consult AutoCAD help for details on creating material libraries and saving templates.

Once the Material library is created they can be selected from within the Hatch Manager.

Select a Geology and then select a Material from the Hatch Manager drop down list.

Press Save to confirm changes within the Hatch Manager.

Materials are not visible if the visual style is set to 2D Wireframe

The below is an example of how the materials may look represented on a drawing based off a previously saved template.