Sorry but isn't it a mess to hatch xrefs, I mean if you hatch something that something and the hatch shuld be in the same drawing -- the lines in one and the pattern in another drawing make from my point of view the drawing into a mess.

i totally agree but the firm I'm with doesn't do things that way...

The safest way is to use a Pline. You could try to get ACAD to recognise the perimeter on it's own. As a slightly quicker way try using the boundary command to generate the Plines and then just edit the ones which screw up.

thanks for the help, but it looks like i'm stuck drawing a Pline on top of the Xref...

prost!

how about making a copy of the xref?...binding and then exploding it. then hatch the duplicate. then move the hatch to the xref drawing?

that would work.

i was having difficulty even hatching the original file (for some reason, the Z dimension got involved and the drawing couldn't be flattened) so I ended up drawing plines on top of the xref, moving the group of plines to be hatched off the xref, hatching then moving the hatch back on top of the xref... total PIA but got it done.

thanks