Support Central
Discover how to find your documents using the many search options available in your manual.
You can search for documents in Smart Manuals in a number of ways. These are:
You can also change the way search results are shown using Custom filters. These allow you to create a hierarchical view of your results by dragging and dropping column headers into the area above the results grid.
This is the simplest form of searching, and returns a list of all files containing the words you enter in the Search field. The results are based on the tags listed in the Document and Assets tables, and from Hotspots. Tags are added when the document is imported into Aconex.
An example of the results for a text-based search for the words ‘first floor’.
This search method lets you drill down to the documents for a specific asset in the project. If you select Assets, you’ll see a list of all the different ones available, along with basic information like the Make, Model, Manufacturer etc.
Double-clicking an asset takes you directly to the location of the asset in the As-built drawing, which is highlighted so you can easily see it. If you then select the asset itself, it displays a list of Document Types. You can open list specific to the type by clicking specific type.
This allows you to search for specific text contained within PDFs for a given Discipline. The results display the filenames that contain the search text, but only within the selected Discipline. You can only search within one Discipline.
Double-clicking on a file will open the PDF in your default PDF reader on your computer.
An example of the results for a PDF text search for the word ‘RC’.
The menu lists the available Handover documents categorized by areas such as architecture, electrical and mechanical.
When you select one of these, it opens more levels showing the various document types. Clicking on any of these opens a list of document specific to that type.
The Document Types menu lists the available files categorized by type. Clicking on one of these to open a list of a specific type of document. In this example these are all manuals.
This section is customizable and allows you to further categorize your Manual. It is based on specific Document fields in your project and configured in the Settings option.
In the example below the Handover Section is catergorized with two levels.
As well as searching using menus, you can also search by drilling down into areas and sub-areas of a graphical view of the project.
This feature is specific to a project and can be customized. The areas and sub-areas you can access are:
To use the graphical search, click on area in the image, then select the sub-area that opens.
Clicking on the sub-area opens a list of the documents available for that area, which are organized by Discipline. Select a discipline to open a list of documents.
You can create customized filters that appear above the list of files in the grid. To do this, right click in the column headings area at the top of the grid to open the Column Chooser menu.
Select Column Chooser to open the Customization menu.
From here you can add the columns you want to use for filtering and searching by double clicking or dragging them into the area above the list. You can add several options to the list, and move them around to re-order them however you require.
