Find and Display Entities

Find and display entities based on their connectivity or proximity to other selected entities.

  1. From the View Controls toolbar, click .
  2. From the guide bar, choose the output entity type.
  3. Choose the desired function: Attached to, Nearby, or Shared by.
  4. Select the input entities to execute the Find operation.
Tip: The find function executes automatically whenever a selection is made. To do this manually, click to disable automatic mode and execute the find operation by clicking .

Attached To Function

The Attached to function finds entities that are attached or connected to the selected FE or geometry entities.

For example, finding surfaces that are attached to the selected surfaces.



Figure 1.
  • - Display the next layer of connected entities.
  • - Find all entities connected to the selected entities. This is equivalent to clicking repeatedly on till there are no more entities that are connected to the selected entities.
  • - Save the found entities to the user mark. Saved selections can retrieved later by right-clicking and selecting Select > Retrieve Selection from the context menu.
Restriction: and are only enabled when the output and input entity types match. For example, finding surfaces attached to selected surfaces.

The Attached to function can also be used to find entities that are not the same as the input entity. For example, Figure 2 shows components attached to the selected connectors are found.



Figure 2.

Nearby Function

The Nearby function finds entities that are near the selected entities, within a specified distance that can be modified in the Radius input field.

The default radius value is 10. Click Entities to display and select from the output entity list.

In the example shown in Figure 3, all the FE, along with the connectors, loads, and systems that are within a search radius of 50 of the selected elements are found.



Figure 3.

Shared By Function

The Shared by function finds entities that are shared by two or more selected entities.

In the example shown in Figure 4, the nodes shared between the two selected components are found.



Figure 4.

Options

Action
Choose between the action of showing or isolating the entities that are found
Show IDs
Enable to show the IDs of the found entities. Disable to clear IDs.
Include tied contact
Include tied contacts when checking for FE connectivity
Check projection
Check for tied contact projection
Include constraints
Include constraints when checking for FE connectivity
Include realized FE
Find both connectors and realized FE
Free edges
Find surface edges when finding lines
Shared edges
Find shared edges when finding lines
Non-manifold edges
Find non-manifold edges when finding lines
Suppressed edges
Find suppressed edges when finding lines
Found nodes
Choose between adding found nodes to mark or marking them as temp nodes
Search method
Choose between the search method of Sphere or Box, while finding nearby entities