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Searchable Text in DWG Files

7 REPLIES 7
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Message 1 of 8
johnfbartlett
3914 Views, 7 Replies

Searchable Text in DWG Files

Hello!

 

I searched through the Discussion Groups for this answer and found some from 2001, but none recently (I could be mistaken).

 

So, here goes:

 

Is there a way to search for text through all the DWG files within a drive (note, not just within a file or a folder)?

 

Let me explain why and maybe you'll feel (hopefully only a little of)  my pain: we lost all data on a drive (a RAID, no less), and had to do a raw file search for files. So what we ended up with is a pile of files that the reconstruction software figures is a bunch of "word", "pdf", "excel" and ... "dwg" files, but no directory structure, no date, and _no_ file names!

 

We are able to search easily PDF, WORD, and EXCEL files, but not DWG files. 

 

We know about the search facility in AutoCAD (we are using LT 2012, soon to install 2013, but not before we deal with this issue since the file structure changed). We're on Windows 7, but aren't on a server. We did try to index the files using the iFilterShop DWG iFilter (and re-indexed), but that didn't help.

 

Any help would be very very (very!!) much appreciated.

 

Best regards to all,

John

7 REPLIES 7
Message 2 of 8
steven-g
in reply to: johnfbartlett

Could you give a bit more detail on how you are managing to search through PDF's and excel etc. but why it doesn't work for DWG. How are you going about the search.

Message 3 of 8
pendean
in reply to: johnfbartlett
Message 4 of 8
johnfbartlett
in reply to: steven-g

Steven-G,

 

Thank you for the reply.

 

We are searching through PDF/WORD/EXCEL documents using Windows 7's search mechanism (without any issue).

 

But, I should mention, we did try using other search mechanisms, but without success.

 

Any suggestions?

 

John

Message 5 of 8
steven-g
in reply to: johnfbartlett

John,

 

   Thats the bit I can't understand because I can search for words within a DWG file using the Windows 7 search bar in just the same way as in PDF/WORD/EXCEL. using this format      type:*.dwg contents:"words to look for"

Message 6 of 8

I can see that searching with Windows 7 search mechanism actually _does_ work, but only if the drawing had text tags in it that one could relate to.

 

So, I guess I need to refine my question: do .dwg files have metadata or metatags that are automatically inserted in the files by AutoCAD to correspond to the file name, creation date, etc?

 

I have this pile of 30K+ files, with names "file001.dwg", "file002.dwg", etc., and no date. How can I make sense of it?

 

Thanks!!

john

 

Message 7 of 8
steven-g
in reply to: johnfbartlett

If you hadn't inserted metadata into the drawings yourself, then your out of luck, DWG's can hold the information but only if you put it in. Try looking at the search options within the DesignCentre of Autocad. The only other thing I can think of would be to create a script that opens all the drawings and extracts attribute information from your drawing title blocks, but again this will only work if you use an attributed block for your titles, and that this information can give you any clues that you need.

Message 8 of 8

Hi John,

 

Could you attach one of your DWG files to this thread?




Bryce Thelin
AutoCAD Product Support

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