Hatches and Materials on Blends in Families

Let's say that you have a tapered brick column family. When you apply the brick material, one side is horizontal but the other side is vertical. There are a couple of things that affect this.

Although we would like be able to create a material parameter for this scenario we can't. This is because we cannot rotate hatch which is applied to a family in a project file. Also, when you apply materials/hatches to blends it tends to rotate the model hatch in strange ways.

This means that we need to apply the material to the blend in the family editor and rotate it right there. You will also be able to adjust the coursing. You can pick directly on the hatch line by using the TAB key, then you can use the rotate and move commands as needed.

Families have limited material choices by default. I'm planning on making another post to explain the best way of importing materials into your custom family.