4.4 HTML search details

The search function is insensitive to case, so capitalizing any letter has no effect on the search results. The basic search function exhibits the following behaviors:

Word match criterion

The basic search function matches the exact spelling of each word that you have typed in the search text field. For example:

Searching for element will find

element
Element
ELEMENT

Variations from the root word "element"—such as "elements," "elemental," or "elementary"—are not found by the default search. You can use an Advanced Search option that widens the search by increasing the number of word forms that are found (see “Search word match criteria,” Section 4.5.4).

Proximity

If you enter more than one word in the Search text field, the default search function finds those words inside the default proximity range. The default proximity range is based on the smallest section size that appears in the table of contents for each book (see “Search terms and search phrases,” Section 4.1). For example:

Searching for twist beam will find

Occurrences of "twist" and "beam"

You can use an Advanced Search option that narrows the search by finding words inside the same paragraph or sentence (see “Limiting the search results by proximity or context,” Section 4.5.3).

Matching phrases

You can search for words that appear together in sequence by placing them between double quotation marks. You can also place a hyphen (-) between the words in the Search text field to search for words that contain a hyphen. For example:

Searching for “cut loft feature” will find

cut loft feature

Searching for step-dependent will find

step-dependent
step dependent

The use of quotation marks controls word order only, not word variations. See “Using the Advanced Search options,” Section 4.5, for information about searching for word derivations.

Wildcard characters (*/?)

The wildcard character (*) can stand for any character or set of characters and enables you to search for words or phrases that contain certain letters or patterns of letters. For example:

Searching for hy*lastic will find

hyperelastic, hyperelasticity, HYPERELASTIC
hypoelastic, hypoelasticity, HYPOELASTIC
Such a search will also find a string of words that include “hy” and “lastic,” such as “hyperbolic Drucker-Prager plasticity.”

Searching for hyper* will find

hyperbolic
hyperelastic, hyperelasticity, HYPERELASTIC
hyperfoam, HYPERFOAM
hyperlinks

Since the wildcard character (*) has special meaning in the search language, the following restrictions apply:

You cannot search for words and phrases containing a wildcard character.
You cannot use a wildcard character as the first character in a search term.
You cannot use a wildcard character to search exclusively for occurrences of keywords in the text.

For example, you cannot search for *lastic or *ELASTIC. However, you can search for an Abaqus keyword by using an Advanced Search option. For more information, see “Narrowing the focus of a search,” Section 4.5.2.

The wildcard character (?) is commonly used as a single-character replacement wildcard in other search engines. It is not used in the Abaqus search engine.

4.4.1 What text is included in a search?

The search function searches almost all the text you can scroll through in the text frame of a book window, including section titles, hyperlinks, and figure titles. Text that appears in equations, graphics and captions, and page headings is excluded from the search function. In addition, text that appears in the introductory sections of each book, such as the Preface, is excluded from the HTML documentation search function. You can use the browser’s search function to search the introductory sections.

The Abaqus HTML documentation search function automatically ignores the words “a” and “the.” You can search for phrases that include “a” and “the” by enclosing the search phrase in quotation marks.

Note: Using quotations marks around “a” or “the” alone produces no hits.

You cannot search for punctuation marks alone or for punctuation marks enclosed by quotation marks. You can search for punctuation marks such as periods or commas as part of a search phrase that is enclosed by quotation marks. You can also search for words connected by a hyphen without the surrounding quotation marks. However, punctuation marks such as periods, commas, or hyphens cannot be the first or last character of the search phrase.

You can search for special characters, but you must use a blackslash before the character. You can search for the following special characters, preceded by a backslash: