Search is one of the most powerful Project Center features. It enables you to search for text in all folders, files and items (including keywords) in a single project, across multiple projects, in project email, in My Projects, in archived projects or the Learn area of the Newformant Community Website. You can also search Google Desktop or a SharePoint site if you use them. Simply enter the text you are searching for in the Search field (located in the Toolbar), select where to search from the drop-down list, then click the Search button. All instances of the text from all files and items in the project are listed in the Search Results window.
If you are searching a SharePoint site that has a blog and/or Wiki, Project Center will search the blog and Wiki if SharePoint indexes them. See SharePoint Integration Overview for more information.
For example, type “expansion” in the search field and click Search. Project Center searches through all files and items in the project (or multiple projects) for all instances of "expansion." This is an indexed search, so the search happens quickly across a wide range of different file types, including many that are unique to the AECO industry.
The results are displayed in the Search Results window. Search filters are available from the Filter by drop-down list that enable you to refine your search. For example, if you know the file you want to find is an AutoCAD .DWG file, you can filter by that file extension. Each time you filter the search results, the list of displayed files is narrowed down to just the types you are looking for. If you select a filter and it doesn't provide the results you want, you can select another filter to refine your search. You can also filter by each column header.
When you find the file you want, you can select it from the Search Results list, and a preview of the file appears in the Preview tab at the bottom for many supported file types. For example, if you are searching for a .PPT file, you can filter on that file type, select the file from the list, and preview the context of the file in the Preview tab.
Double-click the file to launch it in the appropriate application. If the file is supported by the Newforma Viewer, it will open in that application. If the file was created by another registered application installed on the system, the file launches in that application.
If search returned a markup session, and you open the markup session in the Newforma Viewer, the text you searched for is selected within the drawing. The text entry appears in the Find field and the Find tab of the Drawing Explorer dialog box. Click the text in the Find tab to zoom in on it in the drawing. You can then create a new markup of the file.
You can perform searches within a search. Once you do a search and the results are returned, you can continue to search just the list of results, as many times as necessary.
Files of type .DWG, .DWF, .DGN, and .DXF open in the Newforma Viewer by default when you double-click them. You can change this behavior in the Change File Associations dialog box.
If you double-click on a file, and its corresponding application is not installed, the file opens in Project Center.
The Newforma Viewer has its own separate Find feature.
Search does not recognize punctuation marks or the
following special characters: ! @ # % ^ & * ? They are ignored.
However, they will be still be found in filenames.
For example, if you want to search the phrase errors
& omissions, the ampersand will be ignored. If you enclose
it in quotes, as follows, it will still be ignored: "errors
& omissions"
When searching the contents of files, search ignores the words in the following list and will not return any results if they are searched on: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/fulltext-stopwords.html. The words in that list will be still be found in filenames.
You can search using the Newforma Project Search Tool (from the Windows Taskbar).
Drawing files often contain references to other drawings or images. Those references, or dependencies, are simply an embedded record of the path to the referenced objects or files. In AutoCAD, reference files are more commonly referred to as XREFs (external reference files). Microstation uses the term "reference files." Drawings containing a reference to other files are referred to as "host drawings."
Search automatically finds any external reference files that contain the text you are searching for. It indexes the text contents of externally referenced drawings and associates those indexed references to their host drawings.
For example, let's say you want to find all instances of the word "expansion." Host drawing file A from your project has a reference to drawing file B, and drawing file B has the text "expansion" in it. (Drawing file A does not.) If you search the project for "expansion," drawing file A will appear in the results list even though it does not contain a text match. This is because it contains a reference to drawing B, which contains the text. (Drawing B also appears in the results list.) See External Reference Details dialog box for related information.
Search also returns EXIF tags from .JPG and .TIFF image files. The list of EXIF tags that Project Center indexes includes:
User Comment (EXIF and XP)
Image Description
Artist
Image Title
Copyright
Document Name
Page Name
Software Used
Title
Author
Keywords
Subject
Since EXIF tags are not part of the visual image data, you will not see the string matches if you open then in the Newforma Viewer. The files containing the EXIF tags will be listed in the Search Results window, but you would need to open the file in an image editor to actually see the EXIF text.
Refer to New and Improved Features in Newforma Project Center for the latest updates, improvements, and additions to the search feature.