To make our drawings to look the way we want, we use fill patterns. For material surface patterns or filled regions we need to have the fill patterns loaded in our models.
The free PAT files are Autodesk Revit Architecture compatible The CAD library includes free Autodesk Revit wood pattern files, free stone hatches, brick hatch patterns, geometric patterns and many scales of each design. Wood CAD Hatch Patterns. The sample PAT files can be found here:%ProgramFiles% Autodesk Revit LT 2015 Data revit.pat revit metric.pat%ProgramFiles% Autodesk Revit LT. Custom Pattern Files. Creating fill patterns in Revit To create a new fill pattern, go to the Manage Tab, click on ‘Additional Settings’ and on the drop down click on Fill Patterns.
If the desired fill pattern is not there, we can create custom fill pattern based on the standard rules available inside Revit environment. You can check HERE how to do that.
Of course sometimes the rules avaialbe inside Revit are not enough to achieve some sort of complex pattern. If this is the case you need to dig deeper. You will need to create custom *PAT file wich can be later imported inside Revit in order to control Revit fill pattern. About *PAT file logic and creation you could visit THIS page.
Free Pat Files For Revit
If you check the info page about creating *PAT files, you will see that this task is not easy and simple. To save time and efford, we use pyRevit add-in for Revit. You can download the add-in from HERE. It is free but feel free to support pyRevit project HERE. You need to draw only the repeating pattern with detail lines. Then with two clicks you need to define the boundaries and you are done. The result is fill pattern loaded in your model. You could also create automatically fill pattern or export *PAT file.
A client recently asked me about rotating patterns in Revit. The reason for the question was that they wanted to rotate a pattern that was imported from a PAT file-namely the Earth hatch pattern. They like the Earth pattern to be at a 45 degree angle. Alas, it is not possible to rotate an imported pattern in Revit. Patterns created directly in Revit (which limits you to just lines in one or both directions) can be rotated, but imported patterns must be at the correct rotation to begin with. This is kind of a silly limitation its true, but this gave me an excuse to dust off my old copy of Sham Tickoo's Customizing AutoCAD.
I have provided a link here to the current edition on Amazon; I have a somewhat older version. But fortunately hatch patterns in AutoCAD have not changed very much in nearly 20 years. So the instructions in my old copy enabled me to create a modified version of the Earth hatch pattern, import it into Revit and then use it as the cut pattern for the material applied to topography in a Revit project.
I have provided the PAT file here. If you wish to create it yourself, simply open NotePad and type the following:
*EARTH45, Earth or ground at 45 degrees(subterranean)
45, 0,0, .25,.25, .25,-.25
45, -.06629, .06629, .25,.25, .25,-.25
45, -.13258, .13258, .25,.25, .25,-.25135, -.13258,.17678, .25,.25, .25,-.25
135, -.06629,.24307, .25,.25, .25,-.25
135, 0,.30936, .25,.25, .25,-.25
Save the file as: EARTH45.pat
.pat File Revit Location
- In Revit, open Materials (Manage tab), select the Site - Earth Material.
- For the Cut Pattern, browse for a new pattern.
- In the Fill Patterns dialog, click New.
- Click the Custom radio button.
- Name the new pattern something like Earth45 and then click Import.
- Browse to the PAT file from above.