Searching the Help
A basic search consists of the word or phrase you want to find. For more control of your search, you can use Boolean operators, nested expressions, and similar word matches.
Tips for searching the Help
- Searches are not case-sensitive.
Note: All results that match are returned, but search results that match the case of your search query exactly are ranked higher. - Punctuation marks (such as the period, colon, semicolon, comma, and hyphen) are ignored.
- You can use double quotation marks to search for a specific string of words or characters. For example, "pit design" or ".png".
- If you type a phrase without quotation marks, the search uses the Boolean operator OR. For example, if you type pit design, the search displays topics containing pit OR design.
- If you want to search for topics that include several terms or phrases, you can use the Boolean operator AND. For example, if you type import AND "block model" AND whittle, the search displays topics that contain all three elements. That is, the words import and whittle , and the phrase block model.
- If your word or phrase contains the underscore character ( _ ), the search treats the underscore as a space.
- You cannot search for quotation marks (as a literal character).
Note: If you want to search for terms that are joined by an underscore, you can use AND in your search. For example, if you want to search for pit_design type pit AND design.
Search examples
The following examples demonstrate how you can use Boolean operators, nested expressions, and similar word matches when you search for words and phrases.
Boolean operators
Type Boolean operators (shown here in bold text) between your search keywords, in UPPER case.
| Search for | Example | Results |
|---|---|---|
| Both terms in the same topic. | concept AND "solid model" | Topics containing both the words concept and the phrase solid model. |
| Either term in a topic. | concept OR "solid model" | Topics containing either the word concept or the phrase solid model or both. |
| Topics that do not contain a term. | NOT model | Topics that do not contain the word model. |
| The first term without the second term. | solid ^ model | Topics containing the word solid, but not the word model. |
Nested expressions
You can use nested expressions for phrase searches that are more complex.
| Example | Results |
|---|---|
| "solid model" AND (string ^ file) | Topics containing the phrase solid model and the word string but not file. |
Similar word matches
When you enter a search term, the topics that appear in the search results have different, but similar, variations of the word. The variations can include variations in verb tense (that is, past, present, and future) and variations in number (that is, singular and plural).
| Example | Results |
|---|---|
| solid | Topics containing solid, solids, and other grammatical variations. |
| triangulate | Topics containing triangulate, triangulates, triangulated, triangulation, and other grammatical variations. |