Text search of a drawing

[BPapp]

Is there any way to search a drawing for certain text instances? We have an 18 sheet installation drawing and a specific note has incorrect information. The (operator) error was cosistent and appears several different places on almost every sheet. It would be great if we could search the drawing for all instances of this text error. We are running Wildfire 5.0.

Thanks,

Bruce

This thread is inactive and closed by the PTC Community Management Team. If you would like to provide a reply and re-open this thread, please notify the moderator and reference the thread. You may also use "Start a topic" button to ask a new question. Please be sure to include what version of the PTC product you are using so another community member knowledgeable about your version may be able to assist.

[CeliaLee]

Unfortunately, there isn't such a tool in drawings to search for text values.

You could export the drawing to *.pdf, and then using the pdf find tool to locate all instances of the erroneous text.

[BenFranklin]

I realize this doesn't sound like much of a response, but I wrote a Pro/TOOLKIT application to both Spell-check and to change "words" or phrases. It was primarily used to swap out obsolete part numbers for the current ones. We had schematics that sometimes had 100+ sheets on them. If there's sufficient interest, I could look into making this commercially available.

Ben

[BPapp]

Wow Ben, that sounds interesting. We get up against the same challenges here with drawings and drawing trees. Not to steal your thunder, but I wonder if Pro/E could add it? Let's see what type of responses there are to your offer though.

Bruce

[BenFranklin]

Thanks for your kindness, Bruce, but no thunder to steal. I've spoken with several PTC folks about this over the years, and would be happy to do so again.

Some of the common challenges are around the topic of which dictionary should be used. I created my own, based on a public domain dictionary of common English words and then added to that all of the text from about 500 drawings, - processed to extract the text, and then spell-checked with a word processor to reject the (many) typos. This was the corporate dictionary. Of course from PTC's perspective, this would have to be done for every supported language.

Further, then the application has a a site dictionary, to allow "local" spellings - this is how we handled the differences between British, American and Canadian spellings. Of course this could be handled with a generic dictionary, or a language-specific "corporate" dictionary, but we considered it an error if British spellings were used, and our UK colleages felt similarly, thus for us it was "COLOR" and for them it was "COLOUR", etc.

Lastly it needed to have a user-specific dictionary so that the user could add their own words. One of the applications for that is the user's own name or initials, and such, plus any new words that aren't already in the dictionary.

We used a reporting mechanism to inspect all words that are added to the user dictionary so that they might be included in the corporate dictionary (if there were any oversights there), thus when one person encountered a new word, eventually it made its way back into the corporate dictionary, if appropriate, saving all of the users from having to accept it into their own user dictionary.

I know it sounds easy in concept, but the execution is a little involved, as you can see.

Ben

[BPapp]

Ben,

Very good points. Initially I hadn't even thought of the spelling differences and languages supported.I was looking for a way to quickly find all instances of a text string (part number) on a drawing, like your need to find wire numbers. Let's hope PTC sees this and adds at least some of the functionality. Thanks again for the helpful reply.

Bruce

[CeliaLee]

Though not my area anymore, I do know that being able to search for text in the search tool is in the future plans for Creo.

[NirajPansare]

Yes creating the Pro/Toolkit application can be the solution of your problem and know it works.

[LawrenceS]

Celia, I just found this topic because I was surprized that Creo 3 just came out and apparently does not have the ability to search notes, which is simply astounding. Any knews on the road map for this?

[BenLoosli]

While this is an old posting, ModelCheck can be used to spell check and even correct misspellings on the face of a drawing.

[bsuslowicz]

True but I believe that most want spell check as part of the text program that underlines red, green, etc as they type so they can correct it at that time and not have to run a seperate program later.

[LawrenceS]

Yes we use spell check via Model Check, but most users (including mysefl), would rather get that immediate visual feedback and have a spell check button handy.

I still cannot fathom, how such a complicated program that is capible of so much, cannot search drawing notes for content (even though Model check can and does do it!). Not only would this remove the necessity of having to export to a pdf to find text on the dwg, it would allow for automatic selection and/or deletion of notes based off of their content.

Can you imagine if pdfs didn't have this capability? or webrowsers? or word? or...the list goes on!...or if Creo didn't have it? Wait a minute, it doesn't?!?!!!

[dschenken]

I'm sorry Lawrence, I am not on maintenance and so I cannot vote for your suggestion.

As a workaround I have created parameters on drawings for use in notes. Instead of just typing "4" for a prime and paint note, I'll create a parameter "primepaint" and assign the string value of "4" to it and use &primepaint elsewhere on the drawing and in the drawing note. That way I can be sure that the value is coordinated across uses.

[LawrenceS]

That is a much more intellegent way of doing it David! Thanks for the suggestion! I think that we should start doing that, although we have thousands of existing drawings that already just have the dumb text...and we don't have a good way to search them out without Creo adding this tool! 😉

A note about the maintenance and idea thing. Although I think I understand PTC's reasoning, it seems odd to me that not only do they not compensate people for their ideas but they require people to pay to have the privledge of PTC getting feedback and free ideas. Doesn't seem right when you look at it that way!

[LawrenceS]

Oh, and not to rub salt in the wounds , but for those who can vote for product ideas, here is the link to this one:

Ability to Find / Search text on drawing (like every other program in existence)