4.4 Conducting a search of the HTML documentation

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

Words that are formed from "element"—such as "elements," "elemental," or "elementary"—are not found by the search. You can use an Advanced Search option that widens the search by increasing the number of word forms that are found (see “Selecting word matches,” 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 same HTML page of the documentation. A page is considered to be the content of the text frame in a book window. For example:

Searching for twist beam will find

Occurrences of "twist" and "beam" inside the same page

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,” Section 4.5.3).

Matching phrases

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

Searching for “cut loft feature” or cut-loft-feature will find

cut loft feature

Searching for step-dependent will find

step-dependent

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

Wildcard character (*)

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.

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. However, you can search for punctuation marks such as periods or commas as part of a search phrase that is enclosed by quotation marks or connected by hyphens. However, the punctuation marks cannot be the first or last part of the search phrase. You can search for a phrase that contains an underscore or a slash, as long as the underscore is not the first or last character in your search phrase. For example, if you search for explicit_*, you will find instances of the explicit_precision parameter. If you search for abaqus/*, you will find instances of the ABAQUS product names.

Note: In some searches involving punctuation—for example, SECTION=GENERAL or abaqus_dir/Documentation—the search function displays hits in the table of contents frame but fails to highlight the hits in the text frame. To find the search phrase in the text frame, use the table of contents to go to the appropriate section in the manual, and use the browser's find on this page function to locate the search phrase.