Hi all, wondering if Manifold Viewer has a search function (by name/id) in the Map.

Any idea would be a great help.

I kind of notice, registered Manifold release 9 doesn't have a search function like Manifold 8.

Or is there another way?

Two ways:

Ctrl-F / Edit - Find

Filters (see the user manual topic).

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Open the drawing's table and use Ctrl-F or Edit - Find. Whatever is the active column will appear as the default in the field box, but you can choose whatever field you want. Find it and select it.

Filters are cool too. That's a quick way to select more than one thing based on the filtered view.

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Selections automatically will appear in the drawing. You can zoom to selection from the context menu on a layer tab.

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The sophisticated way to finding things is to use both map and table. Ctrl-click the table's tab so you can have it appear in a horizontal set below the drawing, or just undock the table.

Did not know about Ctrl-clicking the table tab. Very cool. Works to Ctrl-click any tab.

Whoa... big brain fade here. How could I have failed to mention the Select panel? Doh.

"Find" is mainly there for Windows legacy reasons. It is out of place in a goofy sort of way in a big time system where tables can be huge, really big, and where there isn't any such thing as an "order" to tables. Find fakes that a bit by having Previous and Next buttons, as if there is such as thing as order. Find is OK for itty-bitty tables, but the moment you scale up to serious GIS tables it's better to use the Select panel.

The Select panel is a way better way to find stuff, using Select templates like Text Contains and so on. Using the Select panel you get previews, and right away you're selecting records, not just moving the cursor to the first record found. With records selected, you can apply a selection filter to see just those.

The Select panel also works against record values in the table even if you are looking at the table's drawing in a map window. That's especially valuable. Selection also supports using expressions, and the Text matches Regexp template allows "finding" based on regular expressions. Other templates facilitate "finds" like Text Starts with, Text Ends with, Text Sounds like, and so on.

Sorry for the brain fade. I was in a hurry and read "find" instead of the broader, "search."

Thank you for this Dimitri. I'm a great enthusiast of Manifold 8. Creating maps to SQL programming I was able to explore well. Now, Manifold 9 came with a promise of having a very fast engine processing. Which is true, after we purchase the said software, I was able to compare the difference in speed with Manifold 8. But still, I'm having a hard time on how to search/locate a point in the Map (combination of layers) in Manifold 9. The "Select" panel works great, but cannot locate to a specific view for that matter(for a file with a large number of points). I've attached an image that shows a function/process in Manifold 8 asking if having a possible same result in Manifold 9.

Forgive me for my ignorance, and hoping you could teach me how to perform this method.

Attachments:
Data image overview.jpg
Search in Manifold 8.jpg

I presume you want to see just one point, or just a handful of points.

About 8: The "previous/next" arrows in the info pane in 8 are there to step through very small sets. They are not an effective way to search through hundreds or thousands of selected points. It is not efficient technique to think "OK, I'll select almost everything and then step through records one at a time with the 'next' arrow until I find manually what I want." Refine the selection down until you can look at a very short list of selected records and the one you want pops out at you based on the attributes you see.

How to proceed in 9:

1. You know how to use Select. Select the points of interest.

2. If the number of points selected is very large, like in your Data image overview jpg, that means the selection criteria used are too broad. Your first task is to refine your selection to a smaller group.

3. Ways to refine your selection:

a) spatial relationships. Use mouse selection in the drawing. There's a user topic on that to help you learn how to do boolean combinations of selections using the mouse.

b) open a table window so you can do filtering and see field contents from selections. That will help guide you in using the Select panel to further reduce the selection, by doing boolean combinations of further selection criteria.

c) filtering techniques and sorts are also a way to refine selections.

Once you have the selection set down to a reasonable number of records, save that selection set so you can go back to it if you want. Then, select the one record of interest and in the map, zoom to that selection. Done.

On a closing note, don't be fooled into thinking that previous/next buttons in 8 make it any easier or quicker to find just the one point you want out of hundreds of selected points. It only seems easier, when the right way is to use better selection technique to narrow down the selection set to only a handful.

I've already done what you stated (Kindly refer to the attached file). Still, one missing on how to zoom(using a function) from the selection made.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Thanks in advance.

Attachments:
Manifold 9 table selection.jpg

Right click on the layer's tab in the map window and choose zoom to selection.

I was having trouble with the Select Template but think I have figured out the problem. Here are the instructions...

To make selections using the Select panel:

1. Open the component (table, drawing, labels, image, map).

2. Click on the Contents pane and then click on the Select panel.

3. Using a template, expression or a saved selection, put together a proposed selection.

4. That proposed selection will be previewed in the window using blue preview color.

5. Choose how the selection will be combined with any previously existing selection by choosing a mode in the pull down menu for the command button.

6. Press the command button, or to launch an equivalent query press the Edit Query button.

Step 3 glosses over the ins and outs of using the template. I have a table with 20 or so fields. The important thing to know for a template search is the type of field each one is. If you are searching for text, you can use the text search as Dimitri described. The field I'm interested in is an integer field. When I select Contents >Select >Template >Text Contains the integer field I want is not included. I clicked around and found if I selected the Equal template, then the Value drop down gave a different set of fields to search which included the integer fields.

I don't have a suggestion to improve step 3 of the instructions, but I suspect there is even more to this and I have only scratched the surface.

Apologize for the attached file. I was going to illustrate a different point and then changed the post.

Attachments:
Manifold 9 Select example.jpg

WoW! works great!

Thanks a lot Dimitri and dchall

To learn more about this, or to learn from the beginning, I strongly suggest reviewing the user manual topics on the Selection panel as well as the examples. That will save lots of time.

Contents - Select

Select Templates

Example: Combining Selections using the Select Panel

Example: Using the Select Panel Template Tab

Example: Using the Select Panel Saved Tab

Example: Construct JSON String using Select and Transform

The Select panel provides templates that make sense for the field you are working with. For example, if you are working with an integer field, there's no "text contains" template because the field is not text.

There's also a video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO7qmbEuzbc which shows the slightly older interface, but you get the idea of how to do selection with that.