Command Syntax for File and Model Search

You can use a special syntax to create precise file and model searches.

A colon and space separate keywords from the values to be searched for. The syntax is:
  • <string>
  • <keyword or custom property>: <value>
You can use the shortcut menu with Copy, Cut, and Paste to edit search strings.

Keywords and Custom Properties

The following keywords are available:

Filename Reference Sheet Author
DocType Material Sketch Owner
Number Feature Attribute Project
Description Block Modified Note
Configuration Layer Created Table

Any custom property can be a keyword. For example, if a SOLIDWORKS document contains the custom property Customer, a search can be Customer: ACME.

Some properties such as Material are mapped to internal SOLIDWORKS values. To bypass the SOLIDWORKS internal search to find specific file custom properties, you can specify FileProperty<property_name> in the search string. For example, FilePropertyMaterial: steel searches only the custom property material for steel and not the SOLIDWORKS internal property.

The date format for Modified and Created is the format that is specified on the local computer. For example, mm/dd/yyyy or dd/mm/yyyy. You can use the following text arguments with Modified or Created:
"today" "last week" "last month" "last year"
"yesterday" "this week" "this month" "this year"

Operators

The following operators are supported:
  • Wildcard. * (asterisk)
  • Quotation marks. " " (for exact term, including spaces)
  • Spaces for compound strings. (implicit AND)
  • Comparison. < and > with Modified and Created. For example, Created: >02/20/2018 finds documents created since 02/20/2018.

Examples of Search Strings

Search String Results
nut Text beginning with nut, same as nut*
screw nut Text with screw and nut, also text with only screw and only nut
"screw nut" Exact term screw nut
*nut Text with nut in the string, equivalent to *nut* (slow)
description: nut Custom property description containing nut
material: steel Custom property material containing steel
doctype: sldasm Assemblies
filename: 234 File name in document starting with 234
modified: "yesterday" Documents modified yesterday
modified: "last year" Documents modified last year (quotation marks required)
modified: >02/01/2018 Documents modified after the date, which must be specified (not yesterday)
created: 02/01/2018 File creation date
nut modified: "today" Text nut in documents modified today
nut number: 123 Text nut in documents with the custom property number beginning with 123
Number: ref876hj Customer: SOLIDWORKS Custom property Number with the value ref876hj and custom property Customer with the value SOLIDWORKS
created: "yesterday" doctype: slddrw author: eric Documents created yesterday with the file extension slddrw and the custom property author with the value eric
material: steel fileext: drw Drawings with steel in annotations or title block