Workflow > Filter By Content

New in 4.136.24.

A search in a selector can only look at columns - the name, the material, the dates. It cannot see what is actually in a part, because that lives inside the part itself. Filter By Content is a second search that opens the parts it has already listed and looks inside them.

It is on the part selector and the plate selector. Because it has to read each item in turn it runs as a second pass over the rows the first search returned, and it adds matches to the list as it finds them - so you can open one without waiting for the rest. The count tells you how many rows it was drawn from, which matters: a match may exist in something the first search never listed.

Typing what to look for

Names in backticks are things PrimeCut knows about. The ... button lists them, and inserts the one you pick, so there is nothing to memorise or spell correctly. Anything you type without backticks is searched for literally.

Several terms can be combined. The same ... menu chooses whether they must all match or any one of them, and rewrites what is already in the box to suit - so what is shown is always what will run.

A name in backticks that PrimeCut does not recognise is reported rather than quietly matching nothing. A mistyped term and a term nothing matches look identical otherwise.

Finding parts by hole size

Hole size is not recorded anywhere as a number, so PrimeCut works it out from the part:

•`Holes(5mm to 25mm)` finds anything with a hole in that range

•`Holes(1/4" to 1")` - inches, as a decimal or a fraction

•`Holes(12 to 14)` - a bare number means whatever units you are working in

It finds a hole whether it was drilled, tapped, punched, pre-pierced or cut out, and it tells a real hole from the rounded end of a slot or the corner of a rounded cutout - which are the same shape to look at, but not the same thing.

Holes formed from ellipses or splines are not found. Only true circles are.

Finding parts by fold lines

`Fold lines(25mm or 1/3 of part)` finds parts marked with a line showing where they are to be folded.

A fold line is a straight line on its own, long enough to be a fold mark rather than a dash in a piece of marked text, that is not being cut and is not marked out as a bevel. How long is up to you, and there are two ways of saying it:

•a length - `Fold lines(200mm)`

•a share of the part - `Fold lines(1/3 of part)`, measured against its shorter side

•or both, in which case a line long enough by either count is found

Neither alone does the job. A share on its own asks too much of a large part, where a third of it is far longer than any line marked on it. A length on its own takes no account of how big the part is.

Offered on the part selector only. A plate holds many parts, each with a size of its own, so a share of "the part" has no single meaning there.

The other things it knows

Term	Finds
`roughing cut`	a roughing pass
`multi cut`	a path cut more than once
`milling tags`	tags left by a milling process to hold a piece in
`cut splits`, `split snips`	splits added where a process crosses a zone boundary, and the snips that go with them
`hole destroy`, `skeleton crops`	skeleton work on a plate - these never match on a part
`plate breaks`, `corner loops`	plate breaks, and loops taken at a corner
`ramped lead in`, `code segments`	a ramped lead in, or added code on a segment
`bevelling`, `milling`, `marking`, `pre-pierce`	the process itself, wherever it is used
`scripted shape`	a shape placed from a script
Tool or process	the dropdown narrows whatever you have typed to one tool or process

Searching the NC on a plate

A plate answers two different questions, so the plate selector has a second box that searches the NC program stored when the plate was scheduled. Its own ... button offers the warnings and errors the post processor writes into it - which is how you find the plates whose programs have something to say about them.

A part has no NC, so the box is not shown on the part selector.