Searching and Finding Text
Press Ctrl+F to open a Find tool that you can use to search for variables or text in all of the model or, for application development, only in methods. In the Find tool, click All to search the entire model, including user interface components, variable definitions, model entity tags, identifiers, and labels. You can specify to search using an Exact match, a Regular expression, or a Case sensitive search by selecting the corresponding check boxes. Windows users can also customize the Quick Access Toolbar to access this button ().
Click Methods to find and optionally replace a text string in methods developed for an application. See the Application Builder documentation for details.
Click Advanced to access some advanced search tools. See Advanced Search Options below.
Click the Find button to launch the search. The search results for each search appears in a separate Find Results window, where each occurrence of the search string appears in a row. Double-click the row to open the node or method and highlight the search result in the Settings window or method where it occurs. The Node column lists the node where the search string appears; the Type column lists the type of the search results, such as Setting, Description, or Method); and the Text column shows the text in which the search string appears.
Advanced Search Options
Click Advanced to enable a more specific search method where individual types of candidates can be searched for. In the Find field, type a search query in the same way as on the All page using an Exact match, a Regular expression, or a Case sensitive search, if desired. In the Filter section, below the Find field, use the Include list to specify what to include: Node tags, Node labels, Node names, Node types, Descriptions, and Settings. The Include list specifies what you search for, so selecting Node tags, for example, only matches the query in the Find field against node tags. The option Descriptions searches for any fixed text in the COMSOL Desktop but not text that can be changed such as lists. The Settings option searches for values of a setting (for example, text in a text field or in a list). In addition, it is possible to add a name query in the Name filter field. Any nonempty entry here will only include settings with a specific name, which is the description of the setting. This query is also affected by the settings for the Exact match, Regular expression, and Case sensitive check boxes. Select the Include API names in search check box to allow the search filter to match against the API names. It is only applicable when searching for Node types and Settings and checks the API names of the following search candidates:
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The query in the Name filter field is matched against the API name of a setting (for example, the Axis type list in a Block geometry feature has axistype as its API name).
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The query in the Find field is matched against the API value of list settings (for example, the option x-axis in the Axis type list has the API value x).
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A search for the value of a check box (typically on or off) is ignored in normal searches but is active when including API names. The Find field can then match values that are on or off for most check boxes.
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For the Node types option in the Include list, which otherwise searches for the descriptive string of the type but also includes the API name of the type (for example, the Work Plane geometry feature has the API type WorkPlane).
Additional Search Tools for the Physics Builder
When searching in the Physics Builder, you can also control the scope of the search in the Find tool. In addition to physics builder files, it can also search in linked files. A linked file can either be a file in an Import node under the External Resources branch (downward search), or a file listed in the External Resources links in the table of the root node’s Setting window (upward search). The search can look for files in the upward direction by selecting the Follow link sources check box, and it can look for files in the downward direction by selecting the Follow imports check box. A Depth value can be used to limit the search. Under the Links tab there is a specialized search that finds links to a selected node. It supports the Follow link sources option, and only need to search upward one level. It is not applicable for nodes that cannot be a target of a link.