Document Search – advanced search fields and filters needed…

florian

Hi community and onshape team,

I currently find the document search very limited. You can only search for document names and partial names. We have for example a document called shape_type. This document is branched for every new customer that wants it in his dimensions => new branch shape_size_serialnumber1, shape_size_serialnumber2. We will use this approach until configurations are available.

In an ideal advanced document search world I would be able to find:

• Document names and parts of it (with wildcards "*" currently not possible)
• Workspace/Branch names
• All the properties inside the workspaces (Name, Type, Part number, Revision, state)
• Custom future properties? A completely different topic  

Offer this as an advanced search and I would be really happy. Make sure to include the filters for

• modified by
• modified date
• owner

I think the pile of documents approach is very good – if, and only if, you have powerful features for searching and filtering. As a positive example I'd like to point out gMail's search. How do you think about it?

_Ðave_

@florian  +1 Thanks for bring this up. Document management is a top priority for me also. I feel that improved searching tools would be a great start.

3dcad

+1 for improved search - in addition to @florian 's ideas I would like to narrow search to private documents. If I ever wan't to search public doc's I would like to click it on with checkbox or so..
Suggestive search is today's standard each written letter should help you find what you're looking for. And when in document list, you should be able to just start writing rather than first moving mouse to search box and clicking focus there.

But even more, I would like to have 'HOT' documents list - which I manually maintain. I usually work with 3-10 active documents at time which I need to access all the time - after project finished I would remove this tag.

Recent list would be almost good enough for this but I'm really annoyed if I click some public model link in forum and then that document stays in my recent list like forever. Remove from recent list would be nice function also. 

viru

+1

StefanR

+1 Totally agree with this request.

florian

Good morning,

since this post a few things improved. We have tags now (wich I don't use yet). I just tried searching for a file. I know I have a part named: "USB-Stick" somewhere, but I don't know where. @lougallo (First name in my mind to mention) how is the roadmap on such features as described above?

A cloud PDM without simple parameter search is just as good as managing everything in an excel file: Not really useful.

––Flo

øyvind_kaurstad

I totally understand the request for better search options, but with the announced plan changes, it also means that for users on the Free plan, the glass walls are going from slightly foggy to max translucency.

This is probably what Onshape wants, but it will also make sure that a fair share of users will turn their backs to Onshape. The Free plan is then only useable for true Open Source (and for test junk), and perhaps not even for true open source, because being able to at least make something more or less finished in a first version before showing it to the world will also be impossible.

3dcad

@florian I bump into similar situation many times, for example yesterday I knew I had made tab / part called euro-pallet, but can't remember where I put it. So I try to refresh memory thinking when I have used it last time, was it layouts - no, machines - no at this point I opened two documents and checked dozen folders. No good.

But I love document tags and new 'move to existing doc' -feature is very handy too. It's super easy to clean up too loaded docs, just select as many tabs as you need and move whole bunch to new or existing doc. Onshape maintains all the links and connects between parts and assemblies.
While waiting for better search, try those

About public search - I don't have opinions at the moment. For me to be interested in any of current public docs, I would need brilliant search and users / models needs to be divided to at least three categories:
1. free plan user models
2. hobbyist models that are actually meant to be shared with others
3. company libraries (for standard models)

I don't ever wan't to search my documents and public at same time, for me they are two very different categories.

bruce_williams

The labels are very helpful; I just put one label on each document, such as active job or training or standard. While they are good, the advanced search is needed.

brucebartlett

The search and ability to label has improved things, but I still find it hard to find stuff I know I have worked on. I knocked out a quick bracket for a upgrade to a machine a little over a year ago , I knew the date but it wasn't where a I expected it to be, spent a heap of time searching and in the mean time labeling to help in the future. I would love the search to go a lot deeper than just file names, I'd like to see tab names, part names and property meta-data included too in an easy to  switch on and off advanced search dialogue. Date range may help as well.

florian

And to add to @brucebartlett and the other requests: a very mild form of fuzzy search that matches A-BBB if you search for stuff like A_BBB or A BBB or A-B* …

3dcad

I think the most important thing is do we need advanced search dialog or just advanced search to go through every bit of data model has?

Remember the days when google had option for advanced search and there you could set specific requirements for your search, later on that has disappeared and algorithms take care of things.

I don't have MASSIVE amount of docs since I only design for one company (my own) and I would rather choose only one smart search field that would show results in smart order like 'this is the first option because last time you searched with this keyword you clicked this doc' etc

I'm not sure if this works for power users, what do you guys think?

david_rubli136

For me it's very important to search branch names over all private documents.