Entering search text
The text input in a quick search is a text string that can consist of any number of words, separated by spaces. The words will be combined using the AND operator unless otherwise specified. Words defined as stop words will not be included in the search.
When performing a search, the short name (tree name), full name, any text attributes, link notes and discrete attribute values of each record are searched. All tables in the database are searched, unless otherwise specified.
All non-alphanumeric characters in the search criteria are treated as a space (unless they are a special character). So the search criteria “Steels/Stainless” is equivalent to “steels stainless”.
Special characters
Certain characters represent search operators or have a special meaning for the search engine. These characters include !^ ~ :\{ } [ ]. You should avoid using these characters in your search criteria. Double quotes and parentheses are also special characters (see next section for their meaning).
Search criteria cannot contain an open parenthesis without a corresponding closing parenthesis and similarly, quotes must be used in pairs. For example the search criteria ‘ “stainless steel” ‘ and ‘ (stainless steel) ‘ are valid but ‘ “stainless steel ‘ and ‘ (stainless steel ‘ are not.
Using search operators
The following search operators can be used in a quick search:
- AND finds both terms in a datasheet.
- OR finds either term in a datasheet.
- Binary NOT finds datasheets that contain the first term, but not the second.
- Phrase searching finds a phrase enclosed in double quotes (“) in a datasheet.
- Wildcard operators * and ?. * matches any sequence of zero or more characters and ? matches zero or one single character. They cannot be used on their own or as the first character of a word.
- Parentheses serve to group terms. Parentheses cannot be empty.
Examples
| Operator | Example | Result |
| AND | steel AND alloy | will find results containing both the words ‘steel’ and ‘alloy’. |
| OR | steel OR alloy | will find results containing either the word ‘steel’, the word ‘alloy’ or both. |
| NOT | steel NOT alloy | will find results containing the word ‘steel’ but not the word ‘alloy’. |
| Phrase Search | “steel alloy” | will find results with the words ‘steel’ and ‘alloy’ located next to each other. |
| * Wildcard Search | metal* | will find results containing the words ‘metal’, ‘metals’, ‘metallic’, etc… |
| ? Wildcard Search | metal? | will find results containing ‘metal’ and ‘metals’ but not ‘metallic’. |
| Parentheses | iron AND (ore OR cast) | will find results with ‘iron’ that also contain ‘ore’ or ‘cast’. |
Stop words
Certain words are defined as stop words – words that will not be included in a text search. Below is the default list of stop words, which can be modified by your GRANTA MI administrator.
| a | be | into | on | then | was |
| an | but | is | or | there | will |
| and | by | it | such | these | with |
| are | for | no | that | the | |
| as | if | not | the | this | |
| at | in | of | their | to |
Search errors
If one of your search terms generated too many items to search for, you will be asked to refine your search. This may occur when using a wildcard (* or ?) on the end of a short search word e.g. ASTM A* or UNS C*. In such a case, please refine your search to make it more accurate, for example, by adding another term, or adding to an existing term, and try again.
For example, instead of searching for ‘ UNS C* ‘, if you are searching for a copper-nickel, try ‘ UNS C7* ‘ and so on.
Please email support if you require further assistance.
If your problem relates to GRANTA MI please attach the MI:Viewer logs and MI:Server logs from the time the problem occurred (these are typically located in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\MI\logs and C:\Program Files\Granta\GRANTA MI\Server\Logs respectively).
