Searching the Online Documentation

You can perform a search in the installed documentation or the documentation in the online portal.

For searching the installed documentation, using Exalead CloudView offers additional search features and a more responsive interface.

This task shows you how to:

Search the Installed Documentation Using Exalead CloudView

You can restrict your search to a particular context and refine your search results to a specific product or guide. In addition, you can restrict the search to find terms in titles or within Abaqus terminology.

For information on installing Exalead CloudView, see the SIMULIA Installation Guide.

  1. Enter the search terms in the search box in the upper-right corner of the browser.

    The default behavior is to search for all the words or forms of the words in any order (a "fuzzy" search).

    Search results are displayed.

    Search results are ordered by relevance to the search query, based on an internal algorithm with weighted preferences for the search string found in a title, the number of matches per page, exact match found, etc.

    Tips:
    • You can surround your text with double quotes to search for exact phrases. For example, if you enter "file parameters", the search returns only pages containing exactly the words file parameters in that order.
    • Supported operators include AND, OR, and NEAR. For the NEAR operator, the maximum distance between terms is 16 words by default. You can specify the maximum separation of the terms using NEAR/x. Additional operators may be supported by the search algorithm but are not supported with term highlighting.
    • You can restrict the search to find terms in titles or within Abaqus terminology.
      ContextSyntaxExample
      Titletitle:termtitle:optimization
      Abaqus keywordabqkeyword:termabqkeyword:"contact clearance"
      Abaqus parameterabqparameter:termabqparameter:unsymm
      Abaqus parameter valueabqparamvalue:termabqparamvalue:yes
      Abaqus user subroutineabqusersub:termabqusersub:umat

  2. Filter the results based on your area of interest.

    • The search results are categorized by Domain, Guide, Section, and, if appropriate, Subsection.
    • Numbers indicate the # of pages with hits, not the number of hits.
    • Entries under these headings are listed in order of the # of pages with hits.

  3. From the search results, select the page you want to view.
    The browser opens the page and updates the breadcrumb trail at the top of the page. The table of contents displayed in the left pane indicates where the displayed page appears in the guide.

    The highlighting of terms is constructed dynamically. Only the exact terms that you entered in the search box are highlighted even though the search algorithm may have included forms of the words. You can click the up/down arrows next to the search box to locate and step through the highlighted terms. If no terms are highlighted, you can use the browser search functionality to locate terms in the page.

  4. To return to the search results, click the left arrow displayed above the topic discussion.

Search the Installed Documentation Using the Java Server

You can use the Java server to restrict your search to a particular context and refine your search results to a specific product or guide.

For information on installing the Java server, see the SIMULIA Installation Guide.

  1. Enter the search terms in the search box in the upper-right corner of the browser.

    Search results are displayed.

    Tips:
    • The search is case insensitive.
    • You can surround your text with double quotes to search for exact phrases. For example, if you enter "file parameters", the search returns only pages containing exactly the words file parameters in that order.
      Note: Searching for exact phrases might result in a long response time.
    • You can use both single words and quoted phrases in your query.
    • If your query contains more than one word, the search returns only the pages that contain all the query words.
      Note: If you search for a group of terms that occur on many pages, you might encounter a long response time.
    • The search considers the following characters as separators and does not take them into account: ," = + ( ) ? * / |.

      It also considers the following characters as separators when they are at the end of a word: _ - ' .

    • The Java server removes the following words from the query unless they are in a quoted phrase: a, and, be, for, from, has, in, is, it, of, on, to, and the.

  2. Filter the results based on your area of interest.

    • The search results are categorized by Domain, App, and Guide.
    • Numbers indicate the # of pages with hits, not the number of hits.
    • Entries under these headings are listed in order of the # of pages with hits.

  3. From the search results, select the page you want to view.
    The browser opens the page and updates the breadcrumb trail at the top of the page. The table of contents displayed in the left pane indicates where the displayed page appears in the guide.

    The highlighting of terms is constructed dynamically. Only the exact terms that you entered in the search box are highlighted even though the search algorithm may have included forms of the words. You can click the up/down arrows next to the search box to locate and step through the highlighted terms. If no terms are highlighted, you can use the browser search functionality to locate terms in the page.

  4. To return to the search results, click the left arrow displayed above the topic discussion.

Search the Documentation in the Online Portal

The Online Portal is available at http://help.3ds.com.

  1. Enter your query in the documentation search box in the upper-right corner of the browser.
    Tips:
    • The default behavior is to search for all the words or forms of the words in any order (a "fuzzy" search).
    • If your query contains more than one word, the search results display pages containing all the words before pages containing only some of the words.
    • You can surround your text with double quotes to search for exact phrases. For example, if you enter "file parameters", the search returns only pages containing exactly the words file parameters in that order.
    • The * character can be used as a wildcard.
    • You can use the following reserved characters in a search, but you must enclose them in quotes: / , < > = : {} [] () \t \n \r.

    Search results are displayed in the right-hand pane, and the Refine your search pane appears on the left.

    • Entries under the headings in the Refine your search pane are listed from most hits to fewest hits.
    • Numbers indicate the number of pages with hits, not the number of hits.

  2. In the Refine your search pane, do one of the following:

    • To filter search results for a single product, click the product in the Area entries. Click the product again to redisplay the results for all products.
    • To filter search results for a single guide, click the guide in the Sub Area entries. Click the guide again to redisplay the results for all guides.
    • To filter search results to several products or guides, click the x to the right of the products or guides you want to exclude.

  3. From the search results, select the page you want to view.
    • The browser opens the page and updates the breadcrumb trail at the top of the page. Exact matches for the search terms, in the order that they appear in the search box, are highlighted in the displayed page. You can use the breadcrumb trail to open a page along the path to the current page.
    • The table of contents displayed in the area to the left indicates where the displayed page appears in the guide.
  4. To clear the search results, do one of the following:

    • Click SIMULIA User Assistance in the top banner. The home page of the documentation is displayed.
    • Navigate to another page using the table of contents or breadcrumb trail.