Support Central
BIM provides the ability to store information against 3D objects relating to systems, components, materials and products such that accurate information for a project is centralized and readily available.
Interrogating object data is the basis of many building processes that happen at all stages of a project. Some of them are specific to disciplines like scheduling and cost management. Others relate to quality and risk in design.
Object searching makes it easier to find specific objects in models based on their object properties. Furthermore, saved object searches can be used downstream for Clash in the Cloud processes.
Object Search is only available in new Model Explore.
Click the Object Search icon in the toolbar to get started.
Only saved searches shared to the project can be used in a clash test. To share a saved search with everyone in the project requires specific permissions, see Models Project Settings – Allow other organizations to manage Model Coordination activities.
Object searches are made up of conditions. Each condition contains the following fields (using a Revit object example):
Narrow your search by grouping conditions together. Click Add Condition to add a new condition to the group.
You can be more specific by using two properties, for example, Category of Ducts AND System Type of Supply Air.
Now let’s say you wanted to find ‘Ducts’ OR ‘Pipes’. Click ‘Add Group’ to add another group of condition/s to build up the search. In the example below note that the structure of object searches is an ‘OR’ of ‘AND’s.
Click the tick icon to put the condition into presentation mode which uses less space. Running a search will automatically put filled-out conditions into this mode. You can return the condition to edit mode by hovering over the condition and clicking the pencil icon.
Anyone who can access models can save a search privately for themselves, but how widely you can share the saved search depends on your access rights.
The same access rights also determine who can edit or delete a saved search that you have created.
To share a saved search with your organization, your user role must have the Model Coordination Administrator secured asset. If you have this secured asset, you can also edit or delete organization-wide saved searches that anyone in your organization created.
To share a saved search with everyone in the project, see Models Project Settings – Allow other organizations to manage Model Coordination activities. If you have these permissions, you can also edit or delete organization-wide and project-wide saved searches that anyone in your organization created.
This is because there are no objects that match the properties used in the search condition(s).
You may also encounter this scenario when running a saved search made for:
The object search engine is thorough and will include objects without geometry if they match the search conditions. Objects without geometry could be IfcProject, IfcSite and IfcBuilding for example.
Currently some property types don’t feature all possible operators such as ‘Contains’ (an example is the ‘Class’ property of the ‘Entity’ property set for an IFC object).
You may also notice operators changing if the property has a numeric value. The ‘Contains’ operator cannot be used for numeric properties. ‘Greater than or equal to’, ‘Less than or equal to’ are not yet available.
If you have included a condition in a search that has found composite objects and you cannot see them in the viewer, try toggling the composite object selection button ‘on’ in the main viewer toolbar, then clicking the Search button again.
Composite objects will then be displayed in the viewer.
Even if you can’t see a found object visualised in the viewer, it will still be included the results count when it matches the properties used in the search condition(s).
If you search specifically for part objects like IfcStairFlight and want to select just that part object in the viewer (rather than its composite - being the whole staircase) then toggle composite object selection ‘off’.
