hatching.............

there are some freeware and some available for purchase.
Also there is a caldding company called Cultured Stone that produce a thing called STONECAD which as a load for free. but you have to register to download. or they can send you a CD
Hope this helps
alan

If anyone finds something better, please let us all know...

Try
Watson makes some very good hatch patterns.
Daryl CAD consultant and part-time Autodesk support for a reseller

I tried but can't register it keeps bombing me out pity it seemed like a nice little program

Nothing I hate more in CAD plots than some clumsy hatching, except maybe the "Look Ma, I drew this entire set of drawings with one lineweight!" school of drafting.
I actually rework the brick hatch patterns for specific jobs, and use associative hatch to size/space thinks like windows etc. like a dynamic coursing chart.

somebody tell me I am not stepping on to many toes, and I'll put my acad.pat file where you can get it.
I cut and pasted stonecad hatch patterns into it back when they were free. see? don't want to get into some one else's pocket book. people need to be paid - but when I got it it was free. great stone patterns.
also, Michael, I reworked the brick hatch that comes with atuocad for 45, 30 and 60 degree patterns. yours look nicer than autocad out of the box, but it's pretty simple trig to adjust.
and we like things to look right, don't we? :)
that and LATTICE was fun to write..... I modify and write simple hatch patterns and paste them into my acad.pat they accumulate, these are the additions I remember.
hmmmm
have an octoganal roof hatch that was a BEAR to get right too. when I go to the trouble of drawing an eight sided tower, I want the shingles to LOOK RIGHT. (damn it)
anyway, what is mine I would happily share. the stone, I liberated whilst it was yet without cost...... and my code is simple, like me. the stonecad stuff is VERY MANY LINES OF CODE. somebody did a great deal of work at some point.

(much laughter on this end - I've seen a few of those too) I am considered anal rentive for STARTING my brick hatching on a corner of a wall. I even change from wall to wall...... you probably charge much more appropriately than I do. I work for poor people with considerable frequency.....
but I don't follow your associative hatch application. unless you mean you adjust your actual window locations to make your brickwork come out right.
if that is the case, I take my hat off to you for your godlike power over the bricklayer. I have trouble getting contractors to just read the plans well enough to use an energy rim......

My hatches are generally designed to start at the lower left corner of a facade/roof, and you probably know that you get that to happen by changing the origin for before hatching.
I work for all kinds, and probably could get away with doing less for the same fee, but take some pride in my drawings.
That's exactly it. If you spec custom window and door sizes, you can tailor them to the coursing using associative hatch. Another use is for modeling masonry masses at the design stage. You can slide the lines up and down until it looks right, and lines up with a course. (I don't get to do much of that, to tell the truth, but did it recently on my Uxbridge project. There I also used it to find top of steel numbers for masonry supports.)
In this case it's not the bricklayers you have to worry about. If you give them a set of numbers that makes sense to them (=easy to use), I generally find no problem in getting the to use them. (They are motivated.) The trouble is in getting the general, and the concrete and steel trades to take the numbers seriously, as the bricklayer has to generally work on top of what those other trades leave behind.
What's an energy rim?

my paper on the wall says "engineer" my wife is a housing designer (residential) energy rim is a term they taught her at UMC
it's a 2x4 that sits on top of the ceiling joists. some contractors build with this method all the time. others need to be "encouraged". her plans are based on using it. typical.
she told me it's called an "energy" rim because it sets the roof enough higher that there is room for insulation near the wall in the attic space with "standard" stick frame construction. roof joists on a 2x4 on 2x6 ceiling joists add 7" they can blow insualtion into.
(I prefer trusses myself)
she may be mistaken, or I may be misrepresenting what she did say. I wrote a LISP routine that draws a mini section based on the corner of that 2x4, the roof pitch and the overhang distance - to get (draw) the elevation of the facia. then I forgot most of the process and became a dumb cad operator. I can be bad about that.
I see your point about the masons. I could wish plumbers had similar physical contraints. :)

... Never heard of it. It's "on edge" sitting on top of ceiling joists? Here they typically squish the roof insulation as it approaches the perimeter and use a 'baffle' to maintain clearance for roof space ventilation from the eaves.
Plumbers do seem to get the "final edit", don't they?

University of Minnesota, Crookston? Where do you work? Minnesota would explain familiarity with good insulating techniques....

University of Missouri, Columbia. Winters can be unkind here, just not so prolonged....
We have not had a really good snow for the past 4 years, and frankly, I miss them.

she lays flat - the 4 in 2x4 being horizontal. you get most of the increase from the height of the ceiling joist. our framers standing a 2x4 on edge and setting rafters on that would make me nervous.....
do they use batt insulation? I really prefer the blown in stuff, for lots of reasons. one being "squished" insulation is kind of like no insulation....
when they try to use a baffle here, assuming similar methods, they tend to be rather, er, inconsistent...
yes - thank God for a good finish carpenter when you find one.