Find all drawings that reference a given part

Obviously the drawing (or assembly) knows what part it documents, knows what part it contains but the part has no knowledge of where it is used or even if there already is a drawing that documents it (much less ten of them). So, without the $100K Oracle file bookkeeper, you faced with looking through the drawings themselves for a string that starts 'model_names' or just brute forcing it with a search for a ".prt" or ".asm", with some file search utility that can make a list of file name and offset pointer to the reference or that can parse the line for the part number. If you were on a Unix system, there's already something like this. On Windows, you have the hamstrung Search function which seems incapable of normal string searches much less of offsets or pointers. I'd try it anyway, searching within *.drw* files for xyz.prt (exact part name, maybe * behind to cover those pesky number extensions.) In fact, confirm for yourself that this information is not stored in Pro/e parts by opening them with Wordpad or an ASCII/Binary editor, like BeyondCompare. Check the header for reference to other models/assemblies/drawings. Go back to Pro/e and confirm this with 'Info>Parent/Child relations' and 'Info>Global Reference Viewer'. See if you can find a drawing referenced in a part as a "child" of the part.

David Janes

This might help you a bit

Paste into something like findref.bat

@echo off findstr /i /s /m "%1" *.prt* > where_used_%1.txt findstr /i /s /m "%1" *.asm* >> where_used_%1.txt findstr /i /s /m "%1" *.drw* >> where_used_%1.txt echo ====== Start List ====== type where_used_%1.txt echo ====== End List ======

Stick the .bat somewhere you can find it.

Open a DOS window in the root directory of the tree you want to search and type

writes to a file in current directory and reads back to screen. I think it'll find most of them (and a few that once referenced the object and are no longer relevent).