A material’s Cut pattern is the hatch Revit draws where a wall, floor or roof is sliced in a plan or section. Three complaints recur: nothing is drawn, a dense mass is drawn, or the hatch reads in one drawing and not in another. Below: a nine-point checklist for the first, the reason behind the other two, and the workarounds Autodesk Community threads describe (all sources opened 2026-11-07).
Why the section hatch ignores the view scale
Autodesk’s help says drafting patterns “are typically used to represent the cut surfaces of elements” and have a density “fixed with respect to the drawing sheet”, while model patterns scale with the model. The cut slot takes drafting patterns only: cad-notes.com says so, the 2018 thread asks Revit to change it, and in Revit 2023 the Motif team saw a model pattern refused with “The FillPattern target must be a drafting pattern”. So a section hatch keeps one density on paper at every scale; the fixes are about choosing which hatch each view uses.
9 checks when a pattern does not show
- Is the element cut? The view range’s cut plane decides, and “walls shorter than 6 feet (or 2 meters) are not cut” (2018 help). A wall below the plane shows only its surface pattern (cad-notes.com).
- Which slot? In the Material Browser’s Graphics tab, Surface Pattern and Cut Pattern each have a foreground and background pattern and colour (Autodesk). The foreground draws above the background, so a dense background can sit behind a legible foreground. An empty slot, or a colour equal to the fill behind it, draws nothing (our note).
- Visual style. Realistic “displays material appearances and artificial lighting” (Autodesk). In the Motif team’s Revit 2023 test view a floor’s surface pattern gave 245,022 pattern pixels in Hidden Line and none in Realistic, so for a surface pattern missing in an elevation, try Hidden Line or Shaded first. Autodesk’s 2014 Wireframe page says surface patterns still display there.
- Detail level (the coarse scale fill pattern that will not show). Coarse draws the wall type’s Coarse Scale Fill Pattern and Color (wall type); the layers’ own patterns appear at medium or fine (compound geometry, both 2014 help). A 2021 reply says the same: coarse gives a flat fill, medium and fine the hatch.
- Zoom. Zoomed out, “the pattern becomes more dense” until it displays as a solid fill, which Autodesk calls pattern overscaling.
- Overrides. Material fills are set in the Material Browser, category fills in Visibility/Graphics (Autodesk). Override Graphics in View by Element has its own Cut Patterns section (Autodesk). Precedence: element, view filter, phasing, category (hierarchy). Element overrides are not stored in view templates.
- Pattern type. A model pattern cannot go in the cut slot, and imported files are filtered by Pattern Type; see how Revit stores and imports fill patterns.
- Overlapping surfaces. Patterned or coloured surfaces in one plane flash or look uneven; Autodesk’s fix is Join Geometry or an offset (help).
- Sketchy lines. Small-scale patterns turn noisy; lower Jitter or clear Visible under Surface Patterns (help).
If the pattern shows but the texture’s joints do not match it, see texture not aligning with the surface pattern.
Too dense, or legible at one scale only
A 2024 post states it: a wall material’s pattern “that looks good and is legible in one drawing at one scale is not legible in a different drawing at a different scale” (thread; its author noted it was posted in the wrong forum, and the accepted reply points to the Ideas forum). In the 2018 batt-insulation thread a drafting hatch sized for 1:50 did not change at 1:100. What contributors there and in a 2021 thread do:
- One hatch per scale, picked per view. A 2023 reply keeps five or six insulation hatches, defaults to the one matching the main plans and sections, and swaps the wall’s background cut hatch in a view’s visibility settings for enlarged plans. View filters and templates carry the swap; a filter overrides every layer of a matching wall.
- Detail level by drawing type. A flat fill at coarse for plans, the hatch at medium or fine for sections; one user noted coarse then hides the stud layer under finishes.
- Leave the hatch out at detail scale. Replies suggest a detail filled region with a model pattern, the Insulation tool or a modelled layer, since cut hatches are symbolic.
- Another density. A drafting pattern’s spacing is “spacing on the sheet” (Create a Basic Fill Pattern), so one basic pattern per density is a few numbers. For a library pattern as a Revit drafting or model .pat, Hatchy writes one (3 free downloads a day with a free account); its drafting download has a 1:N control (default 100) and the file header notes the scale. A thin cut band keeps few lines: a 200 mm wall at 1:100 is 2 mm of paper, and the Motif team measured that a readable tile needs about 6 mm of paper or more.
Motif for Revit: what it does with the cut hatch
This section is about our own add-in (3dshouse makes it). Motif makes a Revit material from a library pattern. Its Cut pattern is a drafting fill pattern, the only kind Revit 2023 accepted. Motif draws it at paper size for the 1:N in Settings (default 1:100): enter the view’s scale, 1:100 for a 1:100 plan. It matches the tile at that scale only. Your own fill patterns are never modified (a clash adds a suffix such as (2)); one Motif made is rewritten by the next press. Windows only; built for Revit 2021 to 2026, tested on Revit 2023, Revit LT untested; 3 free uses per UTC day with a free 3dshouse account, asked for at the first use.
Sources (all opened 2026-11-07)
- Autodesk help: About Drafting Patterns and Model Patterns (2024)
- Autodesk help: Change the Graphics Properties of a Material (2024)
- Autodesk help: Apply a Fill Pattern (2025)
- Autodesk help: Create a Basic Fill Pattern (2024)
- Autodesk help: About the View Range (2018)
- Autodesk help: About Realistic Visual Style (2023)
- Autodesk help: Wireframe Visual Style (2014)
- Autodesk help: Materials in Compound Geometry (2014)
- Autodesk help: Structural Wall Type Properties (2014)
- Autodesk help: Element Visibility Override Hierarchy (2023)
- Autodesk help: Override Graphics in View by Element (2024)
- Autodesk help: Issues with Surface Patterns (2022)
- Autodesk help: Inconsistent Graphics for Surfaces (2022)
- cad-notes.com: Surface and Cut Patterns in Revit (2023)
- Autodesk Community: model fill pattern as cut pattern (2018 to 2023)
- Autodesk Community: model patterns as a material’s Cut Pattern (2024)
- Autodesk Community: different cut pattern in plan and section (2021)
FAQ
Why is the cut hatch of my wall not showing in plan?
Most often the wall is not cut in that view: “Walls shorter than 6 feet (or 2 meters) are not cut, even if they intersect the cut plane” (Autodesk, 2018 help). If it is cut, work through the other eight checks above.
Can a model fill pattern be a material’s cut pattern?
No. cad-notes.com says only drafting patterns work there, and in Revit 2023 the Motif team saw Revit refuse a model pattern with “The FillPattern target must be a drafting pattern”. The surface pattern takes either kind.
Why does the hatch turn into a dark mass at 1:200?
Autodesk calls it pattern overscaling: zoomed out, the pattern becomes more dense until it displays as a solid fill (Autodesk). A drafting pattern’s density is fixed on the sheet, so a hatch drawn for 1:50 does not open up at 1:200.
Can one material show a different section hatch in plan and in section?
Not from the material alone. The threads use a per-view override, a view filter or another detail level (2021 thread); Autodesk ranks element overrides above filters, filters above phasing, phasing above category overrides (hierarchy).
Does Motif change its section hatch with the view scale?
Not by itself. It draws the Cut pattern at paper size for the 1:N set in Settings (default 1:100), so it matches the tile at that scale only; at another view scale the spacing on the sheet stays the same. Motif makes no pattern that changes with the view.
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