How to merge Fills

Issue description

You have multiple adjacent fill elements with identical properties and patterns, but they appear as separate fills in your project. The fills may be overlapping or adjoining, and you want to merge them into a single unified fill element.

Solution

The issue occurs when fills have matching visual properties but are not automatically merged due to differences in their attributes or positions. The built-in Fill Consolidation feature can merge identical adjoining fills into a single element.

Combine Fills using Fill Consolidation

1. Select at least two Fill elements that you want to combine
2. Access the Edit menu and navigate to Reshape > Fill Consolidation
3. In the Fill Consolidation Settings dialog box enable Merge identical adjoining Fills
4. Choose your preferred outline handling option:

• Don't merge any Fills that have outlines—Fills with outlines will not be merged at all
• Merge identical Fills if they have identical outlines—only Fills with matching outlines will merge
• Merge identical Fills regardless of their outlines—all identical Fills merge whether outlines match or not

   5. Click OK to execute the consolidation

Additional Consolidation options

You can also enable these settings in the same dialog:

• Trim overlapping Fills—removes overlapped portions keeping only the top fill visible
• Convert Fill outlines into Lines and Arcs—converts fill boundaries into separate line elements

Requirements for successful Fill merging

For Fills to merge successfully, they must have identical properties:

• Same Fill pattern and type
• Identical foreground and background colors
• Same pattern orientation (Project Origin/Fill Origin/Custom Distortion)
• Same layer assignment
• Same fill category (or use Merge Settings to ignore category differences)

Alternative method: manual Fill addition

For Fills that cannot be merged automatically:

1. Select the first fill using the Fill Tool
2. Click on an edge of the fill to activate the Pet Palette
3. Choose the Add (+) option from the Pet Palette
4. Use the Magic Wand to trace the second Fill area
5. Delete the original second Fill manually

Troubleshooting common issues

If Fills will not merge, check that they:

• Are assigned to the same layer
• Have identical Fill categories or enable category merging in Merge Settings
• Share the same pattern orientation settings
• Are actually touching or adjoining (fills must be adjacent to merge)

The resulting merged Fill will carry the Element ID of the largest original Fill.

If you need more help…

Check out more content on the Support Site, Graphisoft Community, or the Graphisoft Learn Portal. You can also contact Technical Support for further assistance.