Searching files without Intralink

I don't know if there's a function in Foundation (don't think so). I have, though, used Windows Search. To find

abc123.prt, search for

*.asm.* Containing Text abc123

I'll be watching a "real" answer along with you.

: "Shultz" wrote : I have a part ( *.prt ) assembled in several assemblies ( *.asm ). How can I : do to know in which assemblies that part is assembled ( without Intralink )?

This is one for you guys working in PTK or J-Link: 'Where used' without Intralink. That would sell, maybe something like the old DOS Norton utilities, but for Pro/e files. Something like that already out there?

David Janes

Thanks Jeff, but...this works on Win2K, but not on XP Pro...

Regards, Shultz.

"Jeff Howard" ha scritto nel messaggio news:TqOld.26507$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...

Oops, yeah I am using W2K (probably will 'til some critical app is no longer supported and then I'm going to give Linux a hard look). Never occurred to me that XP couldn't. Maybe possible to work up a DOS Find (or has that been done away with, too?) batch file?

Some things that might be worth a try if someone doesn't offer anything ... Post to mcadcentral.com or ptcuser.org. They see a bit more traffic than this group, I believe. Mcadcentral also has some (inexpensive?) Pro/E utilities listed on the site. Maybe one of them will have a function to do the find (?).

Try doing it from command prompt using the old DOS 'Find' command.

1. Open command prompt (also known as DOS prompt). To limit the scope of your search, navigate to the folder that is guaranteed to contain all assemblies that contain your part (for instance, if you keep all your Pro/E work in subfolders under folder 'Pojects', or some such, this will be the folder under which you want to search). I am assuming you are familiar with the old DOS 'CD..', 'DIR /p', and 'CD [path]' statements that are used to navigate folders in command prompt mode. If not, I can elaborate on that or you can download a tool that will add the 'Open Command Window Here' to your right mouse button menu in Windows Explorer. It's a neat tool, I use it all the time to open Command Prompt right where I need it. It is available from quite a few sites; I downloaded it from
   formatting link
2. Let's say your part's name is widget.prt. The command syntax will be: FIND /C "WIDGET.PRT" *.ASM* If you want the search to ignore the case of the letters in the part's name, add /I right after or before /C. You will get a listing of all assembly files in the search path with the number of instances of the string "WIDGET.PRT" listed after the assembly file name. If the assembly file does not contain "WIDGET.PRT", the number will be 0. Unfortunately, I don't know of any way to completely exclude the names of assembly files that don't contain the "WIDGET.PRT", so if you have a lot of assembly files in your search path, you will need to manually sort all the '0' entries out. It might be easier to do this after copying the list and pasting it into a word pocessor. In case you haven't done this from he Command Prompt before, selection by dragging your mouse doesn't work there. What you need to do is right-click anywhere inside Command Prompt window, choose 'Select All' from the context menu, hit CTRL-C, then switch to your word processor of choice and hit CTRL-V. Now you can delete all the unnecessary stuff.

This is, of course, very cumbersome, but if you absolutely need to find all these files, it will work.

P.S. Give the command prompt some time to find all the instances after you type in the 'FIND...' and hit 'ENTER'. It seems to take longer than the search from the regular Explorer interface.

Thanks, Alex. You got me thinking on this again and there's another command that might be a little better suited assuming XP still supports it.

findstr /s /m "string" *.asm*

will search subdirectories (/s) and return a list of files (/m) containing the string. (Or, at least so I think. I just gave it a quick try and it seems to.)

Can be done from a session system window. There's also a way to add an RMB menu DOS prompt in Explorer. Believe I found it in Windoze Help.

A couple more tidbits that might be of use:

Typing "findstr /?" or "help findstr" will list the command syntax and switches.

If there's going to be a long list of files returned the output of the command can be routed to a text file by using "findstr /s /m "string"

*.asm* > somename.txt".

If something should cause the command to hang, ctrl + c should abort it.

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Just a small add... holding the windows key (next to the control) and hitting "r" will get that run box up quick. If the last thing you did was CMD you can have that window up pretty fast. You can also type excel, calc and launch stuff really fast.

Windows key also works great with "e" for Explorer, "M" for minimize and "L" for lock the PC

-meld

Jeff Howard wrote:

We've just been down a route a bit like this and didn't want to pay the extortionate PTC prices for Intralink. Our VAR (Concurrent Engineering +44(0)121 500 0130, ask for Lee, tell him Ivan sent you) suggested DesgnData Manager

which is working out at about 55% of the cost of Intralink and will do all your searching & more.... It will run a 'where used' search, manage all you BOM data and any other specs or documents you've got. There's a demo on the website which is well worth checking out.

Ivan Robinson Senior Design Engineer International Radiators. Leicester.