SOLIDWORKS Support Monthly News – May 2020

Hello to all,

Welcome to the new edition of the SOLIDWORKS Support Monthly News!  This monthly news blog is co-authored by members of the SOLIDWORKS Technical Support teams worldwide.

SOLIDWORKS PDM 2020 Quick Search Tool

By Nicole Phillips

We going to go over one of my favorite additions to SOLIDWORKS PDM 2020…Quick Search Tool.

You now have a search box right at your fingertips while navigating within the vault.  You can search right in the folder you are in, or search the folder you are in and the sub folders.  To get to the quick search you can mouse over and click in the box to start typing your search.  Or simply press the Ctrl + F keys to access the quick search and you can type your search right away without using the mouse.  By default, the Quick Search will just search by File/Folder Name, but you can expand that to additional variables.  To start, we’ll go over the Quick Search Variable Lists.

To enhance the search we can expand the search criteria from just File/Folder Names to 5 additional variables per list.  With this ability of Lists we can also make different lists and assign those to different users/groups. To get to the “Quick Search Variable Lists”, open up the PDM Administration Tool, and expand “Lists”.  Right click on the “Quick Search Variable Lists” and select “New List”

In the New List, you can customize it to up to any 5 additional variables you want.  In my example, I am using these 5 additional variables and assigning them to the user’s I have available in the vault.

Now I will have will have the additional variables I can search.  If you are testing this and already logged in to the vault and you do not see them right away.  Just log out, by exiting from the SOLIDWORKS PDM tray icon and log back in.  They will then be available right away for you.

Now to go a bit further, we now have available operators we can use, AND, OR, and NOT.  These operators we’ll go over are also available in any search card, Web2 search, the SOLIDWORKS PDM Search Tool and Quick Search.   Also note that these operators must be capitalized as they are case-sensitive or alternatively, you can use their corresponding symbols.   The operators are:

• AND or &
  • Note, a space in the search will imply an AND operator
• OR or |
• NOT or !

Below we’ll go over a few search and what results we will retrieve back:

First example, I want to find all the parts and drawings in the folder.  This operator I will use is “OR” and it will show me all results with prt and dwg in the name and/or variables that I h

This example we’ll be using the AND operator.  I wanted to find any files that included speaker and prt in the filename:

Third example, we are using the NOT operator.  I choose to look in the variable “Author” and I wanted to find any files in this folder that were not Authored by Admin:

Lastly we’ll show a greater than operator (>) using the Revision field.  We are looking for revisions that are greater than A using our defined revision scheme.  Here you can see it brought back the files that had a revision greater than A:

With these few examples you can start to see how great this quick search can be.  And the many ways you can use it.  There are so many abilities with these operators you can do in the search.  With the bonus of the performance of finding the files you need much more quickly with quick search.  I encourage you to check out the new quick search and all the other great enhancements with SOLIDWORKS PDM 2020!  If you want to check out the help documentation on these and many other features, check out the online help here.

Noteworthy Solutions from the SOLIDWORKS Knowledge Base

In the SOLIDWORKS® 2020 software, why does hiding or showing components in a lightweight or large assembly mode (LAM) assembly cause a crash?
For more information, see Solution Id: S-077709.

In the SOLIDWORKS® Electrical software, is it possible to change the default snap and grid settings when I create a new symbol?
For more information on this, see Solution Id: S-077605.

What can cause Windows® File Explorer to hang or crash when selecting the ‘Preview’, ‘Data Card’, ‘Version’, ‘BOM’, ‘Contains’ or ‘Where Used’ tabs in the SOLIDWORKS® PDM 2020 SP2 file vault view?
For more information, see Solution Id: S-077678.

In the SOLIDWORKS® Plastics 2019 and earlier software, how do I assign two different ‘Insert’ materials to two different ‘Cavity’ > ‘Insert’ domains?
For more information on this, see Solution Id: S-077516.

In the SOLIDWORKS® Flow Simulation software, is there a way to plot temperature gradients across a solid body?
For more information, check out Solution Id: S-077643.

That’s it for this month. Thanks for reading this edition of SOLIDWORKS Support News. If you need additional help with these issues or any others, please contact your SOLIDWORKS Value Added Reseller.

Comments and suggestions are always welcome. You can enter them below.