MICROSTATION - CUSTOM HATCH PATTTERNS

I cannot remember any recent white papers nor do I have any idea whether there are older write-ups on this.
Basically, you need to make a cell. To look good, the cell needs to look correct when tiled - in other words, the right edge and left edge need to be continuations of each other, as do the top and bottom edge.
Years ago, there was a UCM (user command) the would create 8 self attachments to the active file, offset around the edges of a bounding box that you identified as the size of the pattern to be created. As you drew your cell within the box, the self attachments showed how the pattern would look when tiled. When you were done, it would detach the reference files and I believe it would either erase the bounding box, or turn that level off. You could then create your cell and it would be ready to go.
There is no reason you cannot manually create the process.

CADDCOP, thanks a million for your help.

I created a symmetrical pattern as a cell and I was able to place my pattern but it does not act like a true pattern since it did not fill my boundary, it just placed like a cell widget, not a pattern. How do I make it act like a pattern to fill a given boundary?

On the Pattern area tool, you specify the cell as the pattern cell in its tool settings. The cell browser dialog box also has a button to make the highlighted cell the active cell, pattern, point or terminator.
In fact, when working with unfamiliar cells, I often make a pattern cell both the active cell and the pattern cell. Then I use the place cell tool to preview the apparent size the cell will be when used as a pattern. Often, I will adjust the active scale until the cell appears to be the appropriate size. Then, you make the pattern scale the same as the active scale before moving on to the Pattern Area tool.

Caddcop,

I was able to get one of my patterns to work by selecting Pattern Area icon, Pattern Definition From Cell, select Pattern, set pattern to Active Pattern and active scale to selected pattern scale. There is still a pattern behaving as an individual cell. What am I likely missing that one of my patterns is not filling the border, using the workflow described above?

So you have two cells, one that will flood a boundary and one that will not?

Does this happen when you use the same boundary?

You can open cell libraries just like you open a design file. Each Cell is a Model. From there you can analyse - Element Information, model properties, etc, s to try and figure what is different in each one.