What would be nice would be to have the border of a pattern have the ability to be "construction". Patterns I am working with now have the border the same color as the the patterns. But the reviewers don't want the borders showing because the borders are on to top of dashed lines and the solid lines print over the dashed lines. So in order to keep all of the pieces of the dropped patterns together I have to group them and then they have no association with patterns any more.
This doesn't exist we need direct option to place such pattern not hooks an loops.
My idea would be in place of disabling association lock when using Point/Fence method place it directly as "drop association". Now it takes additional clicks to place shape then pattern then drop then delete shape. More additional clicks is a slogan for CONNECT version but it shouldn't be that way.
You can do this now:
With "Associative Boundary" enabled, the pattern is created as a separate element that won't have a visible border. If the border element was construction, you can select the pattern element and change it to primary, move it to a different level, etc. to control it's display independently from the border element.
You can also use the "drop association" key-in (in CE anyway, didn't check v8i) to end up with a borderless pattern shape that is no longer associated with it's border elements, you can then modify the pattern shape with the vertex handles.