Transparent Solid Hatches

I'm going to start my first post with a little trick i learned the other day. How to make a transparent solid hatch!

Note!

This only works with AutoCad Civil 3D & AutoCad Map 3D.

Ok.

Now let's say you have some solid hatches that you want to make transparent in order to see the aerial view from underneath them, for example.

Here's What you have to do:

Step 1:

Select the hatch you want to make transparent and use the 'shrinkwrap' command.

This will create a polyline boundary around all your selected hatches. Now you can delete those hatches.

Step 2:

Now you have to export the boundaries as a .sdf file.

Go to Map>Tools>Export, select the .sdf extension, and type the a name for the shape file.

Step 3:

In the Export wizard, in the 'Selection' tab, click on the 'Select Manually' button.

Select the boundaries you created and hit Enter.

Step 4:

In the 'Feature Class' tab, you can select single or multiple class, depending if you selected one or more layers.

In the Geometry section, assign Polygon to the layers you selected.

Step 5.

In the 'Options' tab, check the 'Treat closed polylines as polygons box' and hit Enter.

Step 6:

Go to the Task Pane>Data>Connect to Data>Add SDF Connection

Browse for the .sdf file you created and press Connect.

From the list of layers, check the layers you selected for the transparent hatch and press Add to Map.

Step 7:

Now your polylines should be filled with solid.

Go to the Task Pane, right click on the layer you want to edit, and select Edit Style.

Click on the color in the style column and from there you can change the color, transparency, and other stuff.

IMPORTANT: If it doesn't come out transparent when you print, set the system variable "MAPPLOTTRANSPARENCY" to ON. If it still doesn't work, try checking your printer's driver settings.

Have Fun!

..i hope this tip was useful!