'Find' portion of 'Find and Replace' seems to not work.

[Anonymous]

I attempted to find all instances of a reference to "sanitary" sewer systems. There is a multileader I knew of that had the word in it, but 'Find' found 0 instances. What's going on here? (See screenshot)

Windows 10 Pro, fully current/updated

Civil 3D 2020, fully current/updated

[Simon_Blain]

If you click on bottom right circle arrow, more options appear that could help. Maybe that text is in a xref, maybe leader text is non checked or it's a field.

Hard to know without the drawing

[Anonymous]

Thanks. That wasn't it, though. There's something odd about this layout sheet, I think. I can find terms across most other sheets, including terms that appear on this sheet.

[Simon_Blain]

Really strange... can you share the drawing ? You've piqued my curiosity

[Anonymous]

I don't see why not. I appreciate you looking into this!

[ChicagoLooper]

The work 'sanitary' appears twice in you drawing. Both instances are mtext, none in mleader. Both instances occur in modelspace, none in paperspace. You can find 'sanitary' in mtext, but I doubt you'll find it in an mleader.

See sheet CIV100.

See sheet CIV102.

When using the FIND command on the word 'sewer' the command identifies four instances when sewer occurs in an mleader. None of those mleaders have the word sanitary. Yes, you can find 'sewer' in an mleader but I doubt you'll find 'sanitary' in one.

[Anonymous]

I was initially looking for "sanitary" to find the specific callout/multileader that I needed to change. That initial screenshot I shared showed that 'FIND' didn't show results for any instances of the string, in model or paper space. Follow-up screenshots showed "asdf" and "COMBINED" where neither showed up on Sheet CIV101. Now it's even goofier. When I search for "sanitary" while I'm ON CIV001, I show two results. When I search while I'm ON CIV101, I don't get ANY results. When I search for "combined" or "sewer" on any sheet, I show the results, *not including" CIV101.

[Simon_Blain · Accepted solution]

So far, what I seem to understand is that as soon as your mleader becomes annotative, the find command will not find any text inside that mleader if you are in paperspace or inside a viewport.

I tested in an empty drawing. If I make a Mleader (non-anno and text style non-anno) find works, if I use a mealder (anno with test style non-anno) find works BUT only while in model space. If I am in a layout even if I'm going inside a viewport, find doesn't work. The same is true with a mleader with anno with a text style with anno.

So, it seems as soon as you going into a layout, the find command with skip over any mleader with annotative at YES. If you are in modelspace thou, it works like a charm.

[ChicagoLooper]

 @Simon_Blain wrote:

<<the find command will not find any text inside that mleader if you are in paperspace or inside a viewport.>>

The FIND command deserves more credit than that. It can find text in (a) modelspace, (b) on the current layout tab or (c) search the entire drawing. It will not only search mtext, it will also search other AutoCad entities. It will also limit your search to only objects you select. 

To see the ‘other types’ of searchable entities click the down arrow in the lower left corner of the FIND dialog window. 

 

[Simon_Blain]

You do realized I already told ADDCWP about that arrow. How about you test what I you said instead of saying generic answer without reading the whole thread.

I tested with entire drawing, current space/layout even selecting the mleader and guess what, it doesn't find anything if you're inside a viewport with an annotative mleader.

[Anonymous]

This is good detective work, but this CAN'T be the way it's supposed to work. Annotative function is AutoCAD's own making, and it's essentially the way many objects are *supposed* to be utilized. There's something very goofy in the coding, because even searching in Bluebeam in the PDF plotted from the drawing, I can't find these text objects.

[Anonymous]

Thanks. I know it's *supposed* to work that way, but for some reason, at least this one layout is not functioning properly.

[Simon_Blain]

I totally agree that it shouldn't be that way but my hopes that autodesk fixes it in the near future are around 0% 😉

[Anonymous]

Yeah, seriously. The "Object Viewer crashes the program" issue has been around for a decade or more. The official solution is a workaround, basically amounting to "use worse graphics settings." Autodesk really kickin' butt on that one.

[cwr-pae]

First you mentioned you can not find the word sanitary in a particular layout, when you post the drawing you have changed the word sanitary to combined sewer. Kind of confuses the issue.

Second, i have no problem finding the words combined and sewer (together or separately) in the mleader object that resides in model space. I can find it when in the layout CIV101, I find it within the Viewport and I find it in  model space.

The issue is with the 'Ignore hidden items' toggle, for some reason the program is considering your annotive mleaders to be 'hidden items' with that setting checked.

[Anonymous]

Thanks. As far as confusing the issue, I was using 'Find' to try to expedite making a change. My workaround (looking directly) allowed me to complete this without the "fancy" 'Find' function. But the following comments should have made it clear that no matter what text string I'm searching for in that layout in a multileader (which exists in Model Space), I can't 'Find' it.

I appreciate the detective work, and the "hidden" objects catch.

[aeichnerMBLN5]

That's the answer I was looking for. Even annotative objects of the current scale are considered 'hidden'. It goes without saying it's a bug, but knowing the workarounds is half the fun.

Thanks.