Hatching, Printing, and Plotting
Hatching
HATCH (or BHATCH) fills a closed boundary with a pattern, solid fill, or gradient. You can pick points inside a boundary or select objects; island detection controls how nested boundaries are filled. Gap tolerance allows slightly open boundaries to hatch, and associative hatches update when their boundary changes. HATCHEDIT changes an existing hatch, and the Properties palette controls pattern, scale, angle, color, transparency, and layer. HPSCALE sets pattern spacing, HPANG sets rotation, and HPASSOC controls associativity for new hatches. Draw order matters: HATCHTOBACK sends hatches behind other objects.
Traps: a hatch that does not appear because the boundary is not closed or the scale is enormous or tiny; a non-associative hatch that does not follow a stretched boundary; and hatching on a non-plotting or frozen layer.
Plotting
PLOT and PAGESETUP define the plotter, paper size, plot area, scale, plot style table, orientation, and options. Plot area choices include Display, Extents, Limits, View, and Window. Fit to paper overrides the specified scale, so a true-scale plot needs an explicit scale such as 1:100. Model-space plots usually need a scale and a plot style; layout plots use the page setup and the viewport scale already set. PUBLISH plots multiple sheets or a sheet set in one batch. Preview before plotting to catch clipped extents and missing lineweights.
Worked example: to produce a 1:100 PDF, choose DWG To PDF.pc3, paper ISO A3, plot area Layout, scale 1:1 for the layout because the viewport supplies 1:100, and monochrome.ctb for black lines; then Preview and plot.