Command Syntax for File and Model Search

A special syntax lets you 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>
A shortcut menu with Copy, Cut, Paste, etc. facilitates editing of 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 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 will search only the custom property material for steel and not the SOLIDWORKS internal property.

The date format for Modified and Created is that specified on the local computer (mm/dd/yyyy or dd/mm/yyyy, for example). You can also 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: >02/20/2011 finds documents created since 02/20/2011.

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: >02/01/2011 Documents modified after the date, which must be specified (not yesterday)
created: 02/01/2011 File creation date
nut modified: "today" Text nut in documents modified today
nut number: 123 Text nut in documents with custom property number beginning with 123
Number: ref876hj Customer: SOLIDWORKS Custom property Number with value ref876hj and custom property Customer with value SOLIDWORKS
created: "yesterday" doctype: slddrw author: eric Documents created yesterday with file extension slddrw and custom property author with value eric
material: steel fileext: drw Drawings with steel in annotations or title block