Search for EMPTY, but existing string parameter in Search Tool

[DanielMarton]

I went through any related topic in the community and the support portal but haven't found the solution yet. I'm 99.9% sure its easily possible. We are using Creo 9.0

We have a parameter in parts and assemblies OBJECT_DESCRIPTION that is also listed as a column in our BOM. Sometimes I find rows in a BOM, with empty Description. In that case I use the Search Tool to find these components with different search criteria, but the most effective way would be to search for the parts that HAVE the OBJECT_DESCRIPTION parameter, BUT it is empty. I attached some pictures.

I tried in the search for NULL or "" but that didn't help.

[ME_CADADMIN]

I could not determine a way to use the Search Tool to do this either. I do have two workarounds though.

1) If you are you using Windchill 11.0 F000 or newer, there is a Windchill search property that can be set to allow for null searches on your designated parameters. com.ptc.windchill.search.queryBuilder.enableNullCriteria

You can set the search criteria to your description parameter (if its designated) and search for nulls.

2) Add you description parameter to your model tree, filter by parts, scroll through your model tree to see if a part has an empty description.

[MartinHanak]

Hi,

you can save the contents of model tree into text file and then use Notepad++ functionality to get "empty parameter" lines. See uploaded video.

Inside the above regex search string orange area contains 3 space characters

Notepad++ marks lines containing 3 space characters on position 18-20

Actions shown in video can be recorded as macro and used in the future as single operation.

[MartinHanak]

... additional tip if Excel is available on your computer. See uploaded video.

I hope all Excel free alternatives have similar functionality.

[DanielMarton]

Thanks for the replies Martin and CADADMIN!

I was pretty confident it is possible through Search Tool and that is why I asked my question that way. Sadly since we use inseparable assemblies that include hundreds or thousands of unimportant components and other filters for our BOM (eg. BOM_VISIBILITY parameter) these workaround themselves don't solve my issue. I guess they would be too time consuming if I have lets say 1500 component in my model tree and 80% of them has this parameter empty. 

I was hoping to have the search condition to find components with empty OBJECT_DESCRIPTION parameter and build a search query along with other conditions to target specifically these components. 

The best workaround I found for my specific case was to create another BOM that lists the object description along with the modell name parameter, and also filters the components the same way as the actual BOM we use. 

Kind regards!

[MartinHanak · Accepted solution]

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@DanielMarton wrote:

Thanks for the replies Martin and CADADMIN!

I was pretty confident it is possible through Search Tool and that is why I asked my question that way. Sadly since we use inseparable assemblies that include hundreds or thousands of unimportant components and other filters for our BOM (eg. BOM_VISIBILITY parameter) these workaround themselves don't solve my issue. I guess they would be too time consuming if I have lets say 1500 component in my model tree and 80% of them has this parameter empty. 

I was hoping to have the search condition to find components with empty OBJECT_DESCRIPTION parameter and build a search query along with other conditions to target specifically these components. 

The best workaround I found for my specific case was to create another BOM that lists the object description along with the modell name parameter, and also filters the components the same way as the actual BOM we use. 

Kind regards!

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Hi,

if I understand you correctly, you create a temporary drawing and in it a repeat region that contains only the models in which you need to fix the empty value.

This solution is perfect because this repeat region can be used to fill parameters with values.

[DanielMarton]

Hi,

I meant I can create another repeat region table, almost identical to the BOM in which I found the rows without Drawing Number and Description (first screenshot). The only difference in the secont table to include an additional column that contains the model name parameter (rel_model_name I guess). So in this second table I can see the components with empty Description, but I can identify them based on their model name. 

And yes, in that table I could also fill the empty cells and the parameters with them!

I guess this solution suits only my special case with empty string parameters, but it gets the job done for me. Sad it is not possible to search for empty parameter in search tool, since eg. there is a condition to search parts in which a certain parameter doesn't even exist..