Introducing Advanced Search in Onshape

cody_armstrong

We just announced an update but we were not quite finished. We still had one huge improvement to announce.  This is something many users have requested so we are really excited about it, and wanted to announce it separately.

ADVANCED SEARCH

The search tool on the Documents Page can now search within Documents for metadata such as Name, Description, Part Number, State and Revision.  This means you can now search not just by Document name, but by the name of any tab within a Document, as well as a number of different properties.  And you can search by any combination of these.  For example, let's say that I wanted to search for all parts with a part number that has "PN-11" in it and is in the "Released" state. Simple.


Or maybe I want to search for all assemblies that have a description with the word "valve" in it, at Revision C.


When using Advanced Search to search within a Document, you are shown a thumbnail of the actual thing you are searching for, not just its Document.  But you can switch the thumbnail to show the Document by clicking the arrow.



These are capabilities generally reserved for complex PDM systems, so we are excited to be bringing them to you. Interested in finding out more?  Check out this video created by @NeilCooke and give it a shot!

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/spvfhx933i?embedType=async&videoWidth=640

3dcad

Awesome! Thanks.

Please narrow the default search for my documents, I tested with common part and got million results from public docs.

I will put in an IR for better version handling, we have been forced to create dozens of versions for standard parts docs and search finds them all

ps. Special thanks for going back to search results after opening & closing a document.

owen_sparks

This is awesome and exactly what I was looking for.  Great job folks.

A couple of things I think would make it even better in no particular order:-

(a) I like the filter method you have in the partstudio feature tree whereby we can toggle each object "type" on and off.  This search differs such that we can only make one choice of "type" from a drop down pick list, e.g. Part or Drawing etc.  I can see myself frequently looking for something that is "either a part or an assembly, but I can't remember which" so would like to look for either, but exclude studios, drawings etc.

(b) Default should be within my docs, or within my company.

(c) Should work within a Label selection (as mentioned in prev post the search box vanishes if you select a label).

(d) Probably the biggest one for me.  I really need this functionality within the derive feature.  Perfect for picking standard parts I've drawn a year plus ago.  No need to know or even care which project it was for or which "folder" I saved to.  Just type a bit of a part number or a description and hey-presto widgets come forth.  Love it.

(e) Some way as @3dcad mentions of suppressing unwanted versions.  We're now getting "common components" files with 50+ revisions of every component even if the first component hasn't been touched since V1, just because we need to version the whole document if anything at all within it changes.  Better still would be a revamp to versioning so we don't make the unwanted ones at all, but just hiding them for now would be great.

Sorry if that sounds like the user is never satisfied  I really like the improvement, honest!

Cheers, Owen S.

brucebartlett

Great Work, I have been waiting for something like this. 

On initial use I couldn't manage to exclude public doc's, is this possible?

Also, I think I'd like to search both part studios and part names at the same time

owen_sparks

@brucebartlett If you pre-select "my documents" from the tree on the left then it searches within that. You'll see the text in the search box change to say something along these lines.
Cheers OwS

brucebartlett

owen_sparks said:

@brucebartlett If you pre-select "my documents" from the tree on the left then it searches within that. You'll see the text in the search box change to say something along these lines.
Cheers OwS

Thanks Owen, I worked that out, I was searching from the recently open. I noticed straight away as you click on your left-hand documents list a note comes up in the search area with the area to search. 

owen_sparks

I bet there are OS folks shouting at their monitors.  "Are those b@$*ar&s ever going to just be grateful for what we give them!" 

Owen S.

jakeramsley

brucebartlett said:

Great Work, I have been waiting for something like this. 

On initial using I couldn't manage to exclude public doc's, is this possible?

Also, I think I'd like to search both part studios and part names at the same time

Searches are based on the filter that is set.  If you have "Created by me" selected, then you will only be searching for documents created by you.  Likewise with "Shared with me" and any company filters.  We have additional work to do to make this work with "Recently opened" and labels, with the current behavior it showing everything.

We knew that this was a step, but not the final step for search.  I will get these tickets written up.

philip_thomas

@owen_sparks - lol, thank you for understanding one side of our emotional paycheck! We're not that put off by the instant list of 'wants' that you, Rami, Bruce and dozens of others give us, because the agile design process lets us work on and release V2 that's that much better!

robert_morris

Awesome! This will help things out a lot.

I agree with @3dcad and others about the need for better version handling. Perhaps by showing just the latest version of the document that the item is located in, and have the other versions available through a button or right-click menu. The right-click menu option would make it similar to how the main documents page works currently.

coleman

Perfect!  
I agree with what others have said- please limit the results to private documents.  
Just always assume we want to search our own documents....not public docs.  

Henk_de_Vlaam

@coleman, please no limitation of the current search functionality. I like the current flexibility. One can choose where to search. First select My documents or one of the others and then start searching. The proposed defaults are also depending on personal preferences. Therefor I posted an improvent request to set the personal default in ones profile (https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/6126/default-search-setting/p1?new=1). The default of that preference can then be My documents.

coleman

@H_d_V
I agree with you I just mean the default search should be our private documents. 

owen_sparks

Hi folks.

I've had time to mull things over and have a revised perspective on the public doc search.  I'd called for My Docs or My Company's docs to be the default but in hindsight this seems a bit insular.  This is cloud CAD, with a good comunity and a bunch of existing models that are public (along with some junk).  For us to all hide away within our own private caves seems a little primitive.

I still stand by wanting our stuff to be the default but depending on the search speed I now think it would be nice for the results to show our files, but with a button that says something along the lines of "Your search also found 1000 public results, click here to display them".

OwS.

3dcad

Or at least show categories Private and Public - Private being the first.

If you're amazed why is this so big deal, try to create document called test and then search for it

@philip_thomas and Onshape as a company
It tends to forgot to mention how much I (we) appreciate the possibility to affect to 'V2' of new functionality. It is truly a new era of software development, actually listening to your customers widely and making short- and longterm decisions according to feedback. Awesome.

StephenG

I thought "Regular Expressions" (RE) were going to be supported.

Is RE support on futures list?