I was recently working on a project where a client requested a line hatch/pattern in red rather than the default colour. I tried following tutorials and videos online to create a seamless coloured pattern, but the process didn’t yield a satisfactory result.
To be honest, I’m not particularly tech-savvy, and I don’t have the spare time to learn how to create seamless pattern images in multiple colours just to achieve something that feels like it should be a simple option.
Since the pattern already exists, would it be possible to introduce the ability to change the colour of the pattern itself instead of being limited to a coloured fill? Being able to recolour existing patterns would make the feature much more flexible and eliminate the need to create separate pattern files for every colour variation.
I genuinely think this would be a game-changing feature for architects, designers, and many other users. I hope it’s something you’re considering for a future update.
I agree. Having control over the colors of the various pattern fills in LayOut is a good idea.
In the meantime it isn’t terribly difficult to make your own. In about two minutes I made a set of red lines starting from the black ones by editing the PNG images and using Save as to rename them.
I opened the five Black Line images in PaintDotNet (a free image editor) and changed the black to red before saving the files.You can see the path at the top of the screenshot.
After opening LO I now have the red versions in my collection.
It might not be quite as simple as being able to change them directly in LO but this doesn’t take long, you can do it now without waiting for a feature addition, and it’s once and done. While the images are open in the image editor you could quickly make any other colors you might need in the future. I spent longer settling on a green color than I did making a set of green lines to go with the red.
I think I was heading in the wrong direction before, which is probably why I wasn’t getting the results I was after. I’ll give your method a try this weekend and, hopefully, create a library of line patterns in different colours.
Also, fingers crossed that this becomes a native feature in LayOut in a future release—it would make the workflow much simpler for many users.
FWIW, you could certainly create your own patterns if you wanted. I’ve made floor tile textures starting in SketchUp. No reason those images couldn’t be used as patterns in LayOut, though. This is a tile pattern I made in SketchUp as an example for a student. I added the image as a pattern in the Material Symbols collection in LO.
