How to search online help

Joe Dunfee
Joe Dunfee
in Other
I am having difficulty using the online help. Specifically, when I search for a number of words, it will generate a list of help articles that do not have all the words I searched for. So, it seems to assume a logical OR for the search terms. Is there a way to make it an AND list that has all of my search terms?

-Joe

Comments

  • Joe Dunfee
    Joe Dunfee
    Note that adding a + in front of each search term has no effect.
  • Tom Foster
    Tom Foster
    Tried "quotes for a particular phrase"?
  • Joe Dunfee
    Joe Dunfee
    Quotes have no effect.
  • Anthony Apostolaros
    Anthony Apostolaros
    Joe, I often see a similar problem in my Google searches. For example, today I googled "list of hybrid cars -best," and despite my attempt to get away from people's opinions on which ones are best and just get a complete list, most of the results had "best" in the title.

    In Bricscad's online help, I use the topics listed on the left, which start out with a program or other general topic, and then get more specific, like "Blocks, attributes, external references and components," and then even more specific, like "Fuzzy insert guided workflow." Farther down on the left, below the programs, there's a command reference and a system variable reference, which is what I'm usually after.
  • Joe Dunfee
    Joe Dunfee
    The "-" operator seems to be working for me on Google. I've always used the Boolean search tools on Google quite regularly. And any search engine that doesn't feature this sort of thing tends to be useless to me.
  • Richard Webb
    Richard Webb
    I wonder whether we'll ever see a decent set of off-line (PDF) help files again?
  • Joe Dunfee
    Joe Dunfee
    I wonder if there are any tools designed for PDFs, to allow some complex searches.

    Decades ago, I think it may have been Gopher, that allowed you to search the internet for words that were near each other. A weakness of PDFs is that they are continuous documents, whereas the BricsCAD online document is broken up in to specific commands or articles. Theoretically, if Bricsys' web page permitted AND searches, it would just bring up specific commands with both words. But the NEAR option may compensate and permit searching PDF for the right command.
  • ALANH
    ALANH
    I have R12 Autocad programming etc I refer to them all the time 4 books, nice thing is can flick pages when not sure of Search words.
  • Anthony Apostolaros
    Anthony Apostolaros
    Richard Webb said:

    I wonder whether we'll ever see a decent set of off-line (PDF) help files again?

    Ralph Grabowski's "Bricscad for Autocad Users V20" is still available as a PDF file, for free. - Link

    And Bricsys' "Offline Help Center" pdf files for v18 to 21 are still available. V18 is a set of 4 files, with a separate command reference and system variables reference. - Link

  • Anthony Apostolaros
    Anthony Apostolaros
    Joe Dunfee said:

    I wonder if there are any tools designed for PDFs, to allow some complex searches. .....

    What about converting the PDF to DOC or RTF and then searching in a word processor?
  • Joe Dunfee
    Joe Dunfee
    I don't think that a word processor can do complex searches. That is, I would want the ability to search the various commands for the words Attribute AND Extract. Or perhaps "attribute" but NOT "Extract". Note that a single PDF or Word document is a single document, not a set of separate articles. So, even if it permitted me to search using boolean methods, it wouldn't make sense. Though, I do recall that back in the early text-only Internet, (perhaps using Gofer) there was the ability to search for two words that were NEAR each other. However, I have never seen that ability in a word processor.
  • Anthony Apostolaros
    Anthony Apostolaros
    edited July 2022
    My very inexpensive word processor, Atlantis, supports wildcards and Regular Expressions in search terms. I don't use RE, except to remove Scripts from HTML files by finding all occurrences of <script[^>]*?>[\s\S]*?<\/script> in Notepad++ and replacing them all with nothing. I think it would allow searching for two words that are near each other. I think I saw an RE once that could find and replace all Scripts and Styles in a single operation. Atlantis and Notepad++ can also highlight all occurrences of a given search term, and can search either in the full document or in the selected parts.
  • Roy Klein Gebbinck
    Roy Klein Gebbinck
    Why not use your favorite search engine?:
    site:help.bricsys.com Attribute AND Extract
  • Joe Dunfee
    Joe Dunfee
    Roy Klein Gebbinck said:

    Why not use your favorite search engine?:
    site:help.bricsys.com Attribute AND Extract

    Thanks for suggesting that. I had forgotten that I had tried that long ago. But, it didn't work then, or when I tried it just now. Specifically, I had restricted my search to the page that is the BricsCAD product documentation page;
    https://help.bricsys.com/document/empty_titles--2_bricscad_title/V22/EN_US?id=16507930211538

    Often you are searching for something for which you don't know the correct terms. So, I tried an example that someone searching for information about line weights may type.

    Site:https://help.bricsys.com/document/empty_titles--2_bricscad_title/V22/EN_US?id=16507930211538 Line Thickness -Polyline

    All my searches take me to just the page that I set in the Site: option. If I search for a very common word in the user manual, like "line". It lists only the web page I have set in the Site: option. It does not take to sub-pages where the details of a command are discussed.

    -Joe
  • Roy Klein Gebbinck
    Roy Klein Gebbinck
    Joe Dunfee said:


    All my searches take me to just the page that I set in the Site: option.

    It seems you have misunderstood that option then. It does not mean: search all (chains of) links that start here. It means: only return pages that belong to this internet (sub)domain.

  • Anthony Apostolaros
    Anthony Apostolaros
    Roy Klein Gebbinck said:

    Why not use your favorite search engine?:
    site:help.bricsys.com Attribute AND Extract

    Beautiful!
    Joe, if that's not what you want, I think we need a better description of what you do want.


  • Joe Dunfee
    Joe Dunfee
    I did some more experimenting with the search method of Site:help.bricsys.com

    It is limited to the current version of BricsCAD. Adding the version year, such as 2014 will return nothing. I am not sure, but I do recall being able to browse to an online version of help for my v14. Perhaps Bricsys no longer hosts online help for anything but the most recent version.

    This method doesn't really return the results you might expect. For example, searching with
    site:help.bricsys.com polyline -attributes
    You might expect to bring up all passages that have the word "polyline" but NOT the word attributes, will bring up results without the word polyline.

    One important reason for a more complex search method, is when you want to exclude a number of hits that are not what you want. I am trying to recall a good example of something I was frustrated trying to search for in the past, but can't think of any. But, for a somewhat plausible example, if you are searching for how to make a solid filled-in area, you are not wanting 3D solids. So any effort to exclude the word "3D" will not work. If you try, with either a NOT operator, or the -,
    site:help.bricsys.com solid NOT 3d
    site:help.bricsys.com solid -3d


    I think this is because the online help really is one page. Any word you want to exclude is in the help file somewhere.

    Thanks for the effort guys, but I suspect any changes that would permit complex searches have to be made on Bricsys's end.

    -Joe
  • Jason Bourhill
    Jason Bourhill
    Attach a PDF document that lists available help, along with links for each version from V9 -> V22.

    Application Help Development Help Regards,
    Jason Bourhill
    BricsCAD V22 Ultimate
    CAD Concepts
  • Joe Dunfee
    Joe Dunfee
    I was surprised to see that integrated help is now only online. That means that your help is crippled if the internet is down. And given that Bricsys is not located in my home country (USA), that means that it is even more vulnerable. I also imagine that if local internet goes down for someone, they don't even have the ability to download a PDF help file.

    With Russian continuing its efforts to expand its borders, Ukrainian businesses that have BricsCAD are probably not happy with Bricsys right now. With China threatening, Taiwanese users also have reason to be nervous that their internet could be disrupted long before any invasion.

    -Joe