by Kim Hyde
I did contemplate naming this Blog `Slop Factor 10 Mr Sulu’ after stumbling into an Autodesk help document with the wonderful title of `Fine Tune Searches with the Search Slop Factor’!!
The Problem
A support enquiry I received recently revealed an issue with simple Vault searches not giving the result the user was expecting. The customer uses a filename convention with primary, secondary and third level IDs each containing 3 characters separated by dashes. The customer generally stores a mixture of both Inventor and AutoCAD files stored in parent directories based on the same naming convention.
In my example (shown in the image above) I have created simple text files using similar format of naming convention for both files and parent folder. You notice that a simple search for `459-459’ returns results for all three differently named files and folders (not just the `CAD-KH-459-459-2B1’ references).
The Solution
By modifying the value for `SearchSlopFactor’ in ADMS’s Web.config file you can refine the search results to limit responses to the range values that you enter for the search.
Step-1 - Locate the Web.config file on the Vault server platform, the following path from my laptop is for the current Vault Professional 2015 default location, but remember that the actual path name will vary depending on the product and release.
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\ADMS Professional 2015\Server\Web\Services
MAKE A COPY OF THE FILE WEB.CONFIG !! (Best advice to do this first, just in case things go wrong!)
Step-2 - Open the file using Notepad and search for the string “SearchSlopFactor’, modify the value to the required value (default value = 10).
Refer to the following link for guidance on the values and managing the expected results:
http://help.autodesk.com/view/VAULT/2015/ENU/?guid=GUID-25422729-3007-4E0C-8118-35DBDB159AD6
Please note that Vault Client should be closed during modifications to the web.config file, then restarted on completion.
The Results
As an example, by setting the `SearchSlopFactor’ to 0, the same search for `459-459’ will return a more specific result as shown below:
Search `Tokens’
As an additional reference, please refer to the following link regarding searching using tokens (packages of syntax) and the valid punctuation values permitted:
http://help.autodesk.com/view/VAULT/2015/ENU/?guid=GUID-05CEE76C-F857-4FD9-B340-348CAA8E46FB
Happy Vaulting!