How to perform a SOLIDWORKS PDM Exact Search (Updated)

When completing a search in SOLIDWORKS PDM using the name field; when two or more words separated by a space the search will use an OR operation.   Or, if you’re searching one word, what happens is a LIKE operation.  In large vaults, these searches will return a lot of mostly unwanted results.  In this article, we’ll look at how to perform a SOLIDWORKS PDM exact search.

Example 1

• In this example; I’m searching for the part named Example 1 A

Search: Example 1 A

The search that’s actually happening is: ExampleOR1ORA.

It’s returning anything matching Example, 1 or A which in large vaults will return a lot of results.

Example 2

• If I’m searching ABC

Search: ABC

The search that’s actually happening is; LIKE ‘%ABC%.

It’s returning anything matching ABC which again in large vaults will return a lot of results.

How to Perform an Exact Search

To search for an exact string, we can use double-quotes.

• Searching “Example 1 A” will only return that filename;

Search: “Example 1 A”

• Searching “ABC” won’t help, as it will return all the options that contain ABC, but have any string of characters before or after ABC….we have a couple of options here, we could include the extension “ABC.txt”;

This narrows it down, but it includes results with characters ahead of “ABC”.  To narrow it down to only ABC.txt, we can add an operator for exact entry =ABC.txt;

Let’s look at another scenario here…we know the filename contains ABC, but we need to only return the option ending with F, we could use a wildcard “ABC*F.*”;

Learn more about SOLIDWORKS PDM

Javelin delivers SOLIDWORKS PDM user and administration training courses either in-class, online, or on-site at your location. Learn more about our SOLIDWORKS PDM Training »