Advanced Search

Locate documents in the vault using multiple search criteria using logical operators. You can search for configuration-specific properties, search in hidden projects, and generate a report from the results.

SolidWorks Explorer tip Advanced Search For a simplified search tool, click Simplified in the Advanced Search dialog box.

SolidWorks Explorer tip Advanced Search If metadata indexing is enabled for the vault, all document revisions are searched. Otherwise, only the latest revisions are searched. See VaultAdmin Search.

Searches can be very slow if you search the entire vault. Searches are faster if you:

  • Clear Search configuration specific properties

  • Narrow the search to one project or parent document with Search only children of

  • Select Ignore links

To locate documents within the vault:

  1. In SolidWorks, right-click in the vault view and select Find/Search.

In SolidWorks Explorer, select the document and click Search Vault SolidWorks Explorer tool swexplorer search Advanced Search (mini toolbar).

  1. Create a search criterion in the Advanced Search dialog box:

    1. Select a Property (All Properties, Revision, a custom property, and so on) to be searched. Labels do not need to be displayed to be searched.

SolidWorks Explorer tip Advanced Search When you choose Display Info, all fields that are displayed in vault view labels are searched.

  1. Select a Condition.

SolidWorks Explorer tip Advanced Search Search criteria can compare dates and revisions for equalities (= and not =), but they cannot compare them for inequalities (> or <).

  1. Type a Value to be searched for in the property.

SolidWorks Explorer tip Advanced SearchOnly numeric values and numeric values with a dot (.) can be used with the following conditions:
=
not =
<
>
>=
<=

  1. Click Add to add the criterion to the list.

  2. To delete a criterion, select a row and click Delete. Click Clear All to delete all criteria.

  1. For subsequent criteria, select And or Or and repeat step 2.

  2. Select options as described below, then click Find to find and highlight the first document in the vault that matches the criteria.

  3. Click Find Next to identify additional items that match the criteria.

  4. Click Generate Report to access the Search Results dialog box, which lists all the project folders and documents that match the search criteria.

In the Search Results dialog box, you can refine the search, output the data to file, and right-click to open a document, take ownership, and so on.

Save or Load Criteria

Save Criteria. To save the list of criteria, click Save Criteria. In the dialog box, browse to a folder, type a file name (default file name extension .sqy), then click Save.

Load Criteria. To load a list of criteria saved previously, click Load Criteria, browse to a file, then click Open.

Options

Ignore case. For text string searches, ignore the text case.

Ignore links. Do not search links or shortcuts.

Search configuration specific properties.

Direction

Select either Backward or Forward to search from the current location in the vault directory.

Report

Include hidden projects. The report in Search Results includes results from projects that are hidden from the current user.

Maximum number of results. Limits the report in Search Results to the number you enter.

Scope

Search only children of. Limits the scope of the search by specifying a project or parent document. The contents and children of the selected item are searched.

Advanced Search