Open Document manager

Open Document manager in one of the following ways:

On the Drawings & reports tab on the ribbon, click the Document manager button.
Enter document manager in Quick Launch. You can also enter drawing list.
Press Ctrl+O if a drawing is open, or press Ctrl+L if you are in the model. You can also customize the shortcut. You can find it in the Keyboard shortcuts dialog by searching either document manager or drawing list.
Select objects in the model, open the contextual toolbar, and select Open or create drawings. Then list the drawings for the selected objects in Document manager by selecting Show drawings for selected objects... in the menu.

Filter, sort and adjust Document manager content


To	Do this
List documents in a certain category	Click a category on the left. You can also hold down Ctrl or Shift and select several categories. You can show/hide the categories list by clicking the arrow in the top left corner of the dialog. To exclude documents from or include documents in an individual category in Document manager, right-click the category and select Exclude/Include. For example, if you just want to see drawings and no other documents, right-click the All files category and select Exclude.
List all documents in the model, both drawings and file documents	Click the All documents category. The file DocumentManagerFileDocumentSettings.txt in your model, project, firm or system folder defines which other document types are shown in addition to drawings.
List all file documents in the model, only including other document types than drawings	Click the All files category.
List all drawings in the model	Click the All drawings category.
List up-to-date drawings only	Click the Up-to-date drawings category.
List drawings that need to be updated	Click the Up-to-date drawings category. Click the Invert document visibility switch.
Only list the documents that you have selected from the list	Activate the Show selected documents only switch. When the switch is active, it is blue . Note that when you activate the Show selected documents only mode, Document manager also show documents that you then create or modify, as long as they match the active search and selected category criteria. These documents will then appear in the list as unselected to distinguish them from the already selected documents.
Hide the currently visible documents in the list and list all other documents	Activate the Invert document visibility switch. When the switch is active, it is blue . When the switch is active, it is blue . The name of the switch changes to Reset document visibility to indicate that clicking the button again will reset the visibility and not invert the visibility a second time. If you click a category or enter a manual search, this switch will be deactivated. Any documents that you have excluded from Document manager using the Exclude command will be ignored by Invert document visibility and will never be shown.
Show changes from now on	Activate the Show changes from the checkpoint set when the button is activated switch. When the switch is active, documents that have changed since the activation of the switch will be displayed. When you have enabled the Show changes from the checkpoint set when the button is activated switch in Document manager, and then when you disable this switch, you will get the following message: Turning off 'Show changes' will reset the changes checkpoint and lose the history of which documents have changed since the checkpoint was set. Are you sure you wish to continue?. Select Create new category. If this switch is active, and you run numbering, any drawings who's status then changes (if parts were modified, for example) will then be automatically shown in the list.
Reset the document list	Click the Show all documents button. This resets the document list so that all documents are visible, and all searches and filtering are cleared. Excluded categories remain excluded. This feature also provides a convenient way to restore the document list to a default state when recording macros.
Reorder columns	To reorder columns, drag the columns to new locations.
Sort columns	To sort a column, click a column title. A small arrow shows that the column is used for sorting and the sort order. To sort by several columns, hold down Shift and click column titles.
Freeze columns	To freeze one or more columns so that columns to the left of the selected column will not scroll horizontally, right-click a column and select Freeze at this column. To unfreeze, right-click and select Unfreeze columns.
Show or hide columns	To hide a column, right-click a column and select Hide column. To show hidden columns, right-click a column and select Show all columns , or Show column and select a hidden column you want to show. The column order, visibility and sorting order are saved in the model folder in an user-suffixed file DocumentManagerDataGridSettings_<user>.xml. Default values are read from DocumentManagerDataGridSettings.xml located in the system folder defined by the `XS_SYSTEM` advanced option if there is no user-specific settings file available. The user settings file can be located in all standard locations (model, project, firm, environment). You can copy the user-specific file file to be shared at the project, firm or environment level. Then you need to remove the username suffix from the file name. If you are copying a file to use in a model, you might need to change or add the username suffix in the file name to match the user that will be using Tekla Structures on that model. For more information about the folder search order, see Folder search order.
Display time	Right-click a column that shows date information, and select Time display and one of the available options: No time Hours and minutes Hours, minutes and seconds If the property only supports date and no time, these options will not be available.
Edit Document manager list data directly	First ensure that the edit switch is active. Then click the data cell you wish to edit, such as Name, Title 1 - Title 3, Freeze, Lock, Ready for issuing, or a cell that comes from drawing UDAs, such as date cells. When the edit switch is active in Document manager, and you move the mouse cursor over a cell that is not editable, the cursor changes to indicate that you cannot edit the cell:
Show and modify drawing views in the model	Select one or more drawings in the document list. Click the Show drawing views in the model button in the top-right corner of the Document managerwindow. When this button is activated, it changes color: The views in the selected drawings are now displayed in the model. You can then use direct modification to work with the view extents and view plane of every view that is contained within each selected drawing in the currently open model views.
Delete drawings or other documents	Select drawings or file documents and click Delete, or right-click and select Delete. If you have selected both drawings and file documents, you get separate confirmation messages for drawings and file documents. If you hold down Shift while you select Delete, Tekla Structures will not ask you to confirm the deletion of documents.

Search for documents

Use the search box at the top to look for the desired documents. Only the documents currently shown in the list are searched.

Search is case insensitive and partial. For example, searching for the string con will match with concrete and second.

You do not need to write the operator AND, just use a space between search terms. For example, searching for the string steel grade will match with steel beam grade but not with steel beam.

You can search for documents within a specific date range or exact date, and define multiple search strings.

You can save searches to avoid typing in frequent searches repeatedly. This is done by saving the current search as a new category. You can also combine existing categories together to easily create more complex queries.

Wildcards and operators

See the table below for explanations and examples of the different wildcards and operators you can use.


Notation	Explanation
*	Match zero to any number of characters. Fore example, `H*T` matches hot, heat, and heavy lifter
?	Matches any single character. For example, `B?-1` matches B1-1, B2-1, Bb-1.
[]	Defines a matching group. The matching group matches any single character out of a set of characters that you give between the brackets. For example, the search `A[ABC]1` matches AA1, AB1, and AC1.
AND	The search expressions on both sides must match. This is the default operator, and you do not have to type it in the search string. For example, `steel AND grade` finds drawings that contain `steel grade S235JR` but does not find drawings that contain `grade S235JR` or `steel S235JR`.
OR	One of the search expressions on either side must match. For example, `steel OR grade` finds drawings that contain `grade S235JR`, `steel grade S235JR` or `steel S235JR`.
! -	These are NOT operators. Use these operators to exclude from the search, for example, `!steel` and `-steel` both mean that the search will not find documents including the string `steel`. If the name of the document that you want to find contains a dash (`-`), enclose the search expression in quotes, including the dash, for example, `"C100-C500"`, then your document is found, for example, `C.1000-C100-C500`.
()	Groups search expressions. Use parentheses () to create more complex expressions. For example: `(B2 AND concrete) OR B3` matches all drawings containing B3 and also the subset of B2 drawings that mention concrete.
""	Disables special characters inside the quotes. Use for phrases that contains spaces or if you want to search for characters that are listed as wildcards or operators in this table. For example, `Mark: "2 - 1"` matches drawings containing [B.2 - 1] and [C.2 - 1].
<Property name>:	Replace <Property name> with one of the properties displayed to limit the search scope to that property. You can search for documents based on the internal name of the property (search name). The search name is shown in the property column header tooltips when you move the mouse pointer over the header. The search name is case sensitive. For example, `CreationDate: 11/20/2020` matches drawings created on the 20th of November 2020.
<	Less than. For example, `CreationDate: < 11/20/2020` matches drawings created before the 20th of November 2020. This operator does not work for fields that contain other characters than numbers.
>	Greater than. For example, `CreationDate: > 11/20/2020` matches drawings created after the 20th of November 2020. This operator does not work for fields that contain other characters than numbers.
=	Exact match. Disables wildcards and partial matching. For example, `CreationDate: = 11/20/2020` matches drawings created on the 20th of November 2020, and `Mark: = [B.2 - 1]` matches drawings containing [B.2 - 1] only. If you type a wildcard, asterisk () for example, it is considered as the character .
<=	Less than or equal. For example, `CreationDate: < 11/20/2020` matches drawings created on the 20th of November 2020 or before.
>=	Greater than or equal. For example, `CreationDate: > 11/20/2020` matches drawings created on the 20th of November 2020 or after.
<<inv>>	Invariant (language-independent) search. Use if you want to match fields written in different languages. For more information, see below.

Searching with date and time

You can search date and time in two different ways depending on the date and time format Tekla Structures is using:
- dd.mm.yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy for dates, for example, 30.11.2018 or 11/30/2018
- hh:mm:ss or hh:mm:sspm and hh:mm:ssam for time, for example, 17:34:45 or 05:34:45pm
Note that advanced options XS_IMPERIAL_DATE and XS_IMPERIAL_TIME determine which date and time format is active. Only the active format is used, which means that a non-imperial date will be ignored if imperial date is the active date format.
You can also enter partial dates and date ranges:
- 2018: any date and time in the year
- 6.2018 (or 6/2018): any date and time in the month
- 24.06.2018 (or 06/24/2018: any time in the specified day
- "06.06.2018 14": any time in the range 14:00 to 14:59 on 06.06.2018. Note that you need to use quotes because otherwise the space is seen as the end of one search expression.

Complex search example

Mark: FP !??FP finds all marks that begin with FP. The search matches [FP123] and [FPZ23] but does not match [AB123FP].

Invariant search values

The search syntax <<inv>>(...) allows you to search for documents and create categories that work in the same way regardless of the language in use.

The values to use when doing invariant <<inv>>(...) searches are listed below.

Property name: IssuedStatus
- NotIssued
- Issued
- IssuedButModified
Property name: DrawingUpToDateStatus
- DrawingIsUpToDate
- PartsWereModified
- DrawingIsUpToDateButMayNeedChecking
- IncludedDrawingModified
- OriginalPartDeleted
- AllPartsDeleted
- NumberOfPartsInNumberingSeriesIncreased
- NumberOfPartsInNumberingSeriesDecreased
- DrawingWasCloned
- DrawingWasUpdated
- CopiedViewChanged
- DrawingWasSplitted
- MovedViewDeleted
- MovedViewLabelChanged
Property name: Changes
- Same values as DrawingUpToDateStatus and IssuedButModified
In date and time search, you can only use the non-imperial formats ( dd.mm.yyyy and hh:mm:ss) :
- <<inv>>(10.5.2017)
- The invariant search ignores the advanced options XS_IMPERIAL_DATE and XS_IMPERIAL_TIME.

For Freeze, Lock, Ready for issuing and Master drawing the following values can be searched for in invariant search and in normal search:

True
False

Create search-based document categories

There are default categories in Document manager, and you can create categories of your own by saving search strings.

To create a search-based category:

Enter a search string that finds the documents you want to categorize.

For more information about the allowed wildcards and operators, see the searching instructions above.
Right-click in the category list on the left and select New.
Define the category properties:
- Name: Enter the name to be shown in the category list. If you use a translation key beginning with the prefix albl_, the name is translated if the translation is found in DocumentManager.ail ( in \messages\DotAppsStrings\). When a valid translation key is used, the translation will be shown in the dialog box.
- Search string: Enter here the search string that gives the desired list of documents. The default for the new category is the active search string. You can test the string by clicking the Test button. Do not leave the Search string box empty.
- Tooltip (optional): Text that is displayed when you move the mouse pointer over a category. If you use a translation key beginning with the prefix albl_, the tooltip is translated if the translation is found in DocumentManager.ail. When a valid translation key is used, the translation will be shown in the dialog box.
- Group: Enter a number that specifies the group of the category. There is a separator in the category list between the different groups.
  
  The default value for a new category is 0. Negative values are allowed.
- Sort index: Enter a number that specifies the location of the category in the category list, and the smaller the number is, the higher the category is on the category list. Categories are sorted first by Group, then Sort index and then by Name.
  
  The default value for a new category is 0. Negative values are allowed.
- Combining operator: Enter AND or OR. When you select several categories at a time, categories with OR rule are combined first and then the ones with AND rule.
- Association type: Change the category association type. The options are Search only, Manual only, and Manual and search. For more information about changing the category type, see section "Change category association type" below.
- Allow delete: If you select this, the Delete command will be available for this category when you right-click the category in the categories list.
All changes in categories are saved in DocumentManagerCategories_<user>.xml in the current model folder. You can rename the file to DocumentManagerCategories.xml and move it to a folder defined with the advanced options XS_PROJECT, XS_FIRM or XS_SYSTEM, or keep it in the current model folder. The default categories are defined in DocumentManagerCategories.xml located in the system folder defined by the advanced option XS_SYSTEM.

For more information about the folder search order, see Folder search order.
Click Save.

Below is an example of a category that lists all assembly drawings that have the character B in the mark:

Create manual document categories

Sometimes you may need to have a document category in Document manager for documents that would be difficult to categorize using the search. You can simply select documents, create a manual category and add your documents there. You can also add documents to and remove documents from existing manually created categories, and combine categories, both search-based and manual ones. A manual category may contain both drawings and file documents.

Creating a manual category may be useful, for example, when you have enabled the Show changes from the checkpoint set when the button is activated feature in Document manager, and then when some documents have changed and are listed, you can add the changed documents in the manual category.


TO	Do this
Create a new manual category and add documents there	Select the documents from the list, right-click and select Manual category > Add to new. Then type a name for the category, an optional tooltip, and define other necessary settings. Then click Save. Options are the same as in the search-based categories, except that the functionality related to search strings, and the Test button are missing if there are documents associated. If there are no documents associated, then the search controls are visible and the category could become a search-based category or a manual category. The newly created or modified manual categories are saved to the DocumentManagerCategories_<user>.xml file under the current model folder.
Save recently changed documents in a new manual category	When you have enabled the Show changes from the checkpoint set when the button is activated switch in Document manager, and when you disable this switch, you will get the following message: Turning off 'Show changes' will reset the changes checkpoint and lose the history of which documents have changed since the checkpoint was set. Are you sure you wish to continue?. Select Create new category. You can also select to turn the switch off and lose the history.
Edit a manual category	Right-click the category in the category list and select Edit.
Add documents to an existing manual category	Select the documents from the list, right-click and select Manual category > Add to existing and then select the desired category. All compatible manual categories are listed. You can add the selected documents to several categories.
Remove documents from a manual category	Select the documents from the list, right-click, select Manual category > Remove from and then select the category from which to remove the documents. You can also select manual categories first so that all documents in those categories are listed, right-click the list, and select Manual category > Remove from selected.
Delete a manual category	Right-click the category in the category list, and select Delete.

Note that if a document ID cannot be found when loading previously saved manual categories, an entry will be written to the Document manager log identifying the manual category and the document ID of the missing document. This situation can arise if a drawing or file document is deleted when Document manager is not open and that document was referenced in a manual category.

Change category association type

You can use the setting Association type in the Edit category and New category dialogs to define if a category is search based, manual, or both.

If the category is of type Search only or Manual and search, you need to define a Search string in the dialog.
If you create a category by first selecting documents from the documents list, the association type is Manual only by default.
If you create a category from the category list, the association type is Search only by default.
You can change the association type later. If you change the type from Search only to Manual only, a message is displayed telling that the Search string for that particular category will be cleared. If you change the type from Manual only to Search only or Manual and search, you need to define a Search string.

Find model objects that have associated drawings in Document manager

You can use Document manager for identifying the objects in the model that have associated drawings.

Before you start, ensure that you only have the Select parts selection switch active. Otherwise part selection may take a long time in large models.

Open a model view where all objects are clearly visible.
Do one of the following:
- Highlight the objects associated to individual drawings by selecting the individual drawings in Document manager and clicking Select objects in the model for selected drawings.
- Highlight all objects that have associated drawings by selecting all drawings in Document manager (Ctrl+A) and clicking Select objects in the model for selected drawings
Tip:
- To see the found objects more clearly in the model, right-click the model and select Show only selected to only show the parts that the Select objects in the model for selected drawings command has found and hide all others.
- After completing the step above you can highlight the objects that do not have drawings by holding down the Ctrl key and selecting the entire model (hold down the left mouse button and drag all the way from left to right).

Find drawings associated to objects selected in model

You can list drawings associated to the objects you have selected in the model only. This is an easy way to identify the drawings associated with a specific part, assembly or cast unit.

Open a model view where all objects are clearly visible.
Select the desired objects in the model.
In Document manager , click Select and show only drawings containing parts currently selected in the model.

Tekla Structures only selects and shows the drawings associated with the objects that you selected in the model. The result also depends on the selected category, which means that if you only have the GA drawings category selected, GA drawings are only shown in the list.

Tip:

You can also show drawings for the selected model objects in Document manager by using the contextual toolbar: Click Open or create drawings and select Show drawings for selected objects... from the displayed menu.

Open documents

To open a drawing, do any of the following:

Double-click the drawing.
Select the drawing from the list and click the Open button at the bottom.
Right-click the drawing in the list and select Open.
To open the previous or next drawing in the list, click the Open previous drawing button or the Open next drawing button at the bottom.

You can also reopen an updated drawing:

When you have a drawing open and you have edited it manually, open the Document manager, and open the same drawing again.

If you have a related software installed, you can also open other documents, such as NC files, DWG files, or PDF files. Do any of the following:

Double-click the document.
Select the document from the list and click the Open button at the bottom.
Right-click the document in the list and select Open.

To open a folder of the selected file document in Windows Explorer, right-click the document and select Open folder.

Issue, lock, freeze and mark ready for issuing

You can lock, freeze or mark ready for issuing by selecting the drawing from the list and clicking the appropriate column next to the drawing. When you do this, first ensure that the edit list switch is active. You can also right-click drawings and select the commands from the context menu, or use the buttons at the top for quick access. Note that you can hide the buttons at the top by clicking the arrow next to the buttons.

For more information about these functionalities, click the following links:

Mark drawings ready for issuing

Issue drawings

Freeze drawings

Lock drawings

Revise drawings

To revise a drawing, select a drawing and click the Revision button. When you revise drawings, you can attach information about the revision changes. Tekla Structures displays this information alongside the revision number or mark. The revision date appears in the revision table. The revision number or mark is shown in the Document manager, and the revision information can be included in reports. You can also add revision marks containing revision information manually in an open drawing.

For more information about revising drawings, see Revise drawings. For details about adding revision marks, see Add revision marks in drawings.

Copy Document manager rows to clipboard

You can copy data from the Document manager list and paste the data in another application, such as a spreadsheet application:

Select a number of documents in the Document manager list.
Right-click and select Copy rows to Clipboard.
Open the other application and paste the row data there.

Create GA drawings

You can create GA drawings quickly and easily in Document manager:

In Document manager, click Create GA Drawing. The Create general arrangement drawing dialog is displayed.
Select the model views of which you need GA drawings, and then create the drawings by clicking Create.

Configure file documents to include in Document manager

The configuration file DocumentManagerFileDocumentSettings.txt defines which file documents are included in Document manager. This file also specifies the folders to search for. This file can be located in any of the standard search locations (model, project, firm and system). By default this file is located in the system folder defined by the advanced option XS_SYSTEM, and you can copy it from there to model, project, firm or system folders for modifications.

For more information about the folder search order, see Folder search order.

The format of each line is <folder_path>\*.<file_name_extension>|<include_subfolders> , where

<folder_path> is a relative or absolute path. A relative model subfolder can be specified using a leading period (.).
*.<file_name_extension> specifies the accepted file types. You can use standard wildcards ? and *.
<include_subfolders> specifies if the subfolders are included. Set to true to include subfolders and to false to not to include subfolders.

Examples:

.\Plotfiles\*.dxf|false

.\DSTV_Profiles\*.nc1|false

.\DSTV_Plates\*.nc1|false

Configure drawing UDAs to show in Document manager columns

The DocumentManagerUDAs*.txt files define the drawing UDAs that are shown in the Document manager columns. The file name can be either DocumentManagerUDAs.txt or DocumentManagerUDAs_<suffix>.txt where <suffix> can be any string. These files can be placed in a folder defined with the advanced options XS_FIRM, XS_PROJECT, XS_SYSTEM or XS_INP, and in the model folder. Document manager also searches for DocumentManagerUDAs*.txt files recursively in extension folders and subfolders. By default, DocumentManagerUDAs.txt is located in the \inp folder defined by the advanced option XS_INP, and you can copy it from there to the other supported folders for modifications. The contents of each file found are merged together.

For more information about the folder search order, see Folder search order.

List all the drawing UDAs that are needed in this file, one UDA on each line. The UDA names are case sensitive. The UDA must exist in the objects.inp file.

Below is an example of the DocumentManagerUDAs.txt file in the Common environment:

DR_APPROVAL_DATE

DR_APPROVAL_SENT

DR_APPROVED_BY

DR_ASSIGNED_BY

DR_ASSIGNED_TO

DR_CHECKED_BY

DR_CHECKED_DATE

DR_DRAWN_BY

comment

For more information about UDAs in drawings, see User-defined attributes in drawings.

Document manager log

All errors occurring in the Document manager functionality are written in the Document manager log file \logs\DocumentManager_<user>.log under the current model folder. This log file also lists the full paths of all the settings files that have been loaded (DocumentManagerUDAs*.txt, DocumentManagerFileDocumentSettings.txt, DocumentManagerDataGridSettings*.xml and DocumentManagerCategories*.xml), which helps you to see which settings files Document manager is finding. The log also tells if a settings file cannot be found.

The log file is limited in size, and will be archived as \logs\DocumentManager_<user>.bak.log when the maximum size has been reached.

Example:

Loading UDA settings file C:\TeklaStructuresModels\New model 3\DocumentManagerUDAs.txt
Loaded column layout settings from file: C:\TeklaStructuresModels\New model 3\DocumentManagerDataGridSettings_user.xml
Loaded frozen column name: Title1 from file: C:\TeklaStructuresModels\New model 3\DocumentManagerDataGridSettings_user.xml
Loaded the column sort order settings from file: C:\TeklaStructuresModels\New model 3\DocumentManagerDataGridSettings_user.xml
Loaded 16 document categories from file: C:\TeklaStructuresModels\New model 3\DocumentManagerCategories_user.xml
No DocumentManagerFileDocumentSettings.txt file found. File documents will not be shown.

Drawing status flags and related status messages


Flag	Column where flag displayed	What's shown in Changes column	Description
		Parts modified	The parts in the drawing have changed, for example, parts have been added or deleted, or part properties have changed.
		Quantity increased or Quantity decreased	The actual drawing is up to date, but the number of identical parts has changed.
		All parts deleted	All parts related to the drawing have been deleted from the model.
			The drawing is locked and you cannot open it for editing. You can check who marked the drawing from the Locked by column.
			The drawing is frozen. Changes made to the model objects, which have drawing objects associated with them, are no longer available in the drawing.
			The drawing has been added as a master drawing in the Master Drawing Catalog.
		Drawing was updated	The drawing is marked ready for issuing. You can check who marked the drawing from the Ready for issuing by column.
		Drawing was updated	The drawing has been updated.
		Linked drawing changed Relation update needed	You have a linked drawing in this drawing and the linked drawing has been modified. You have moved detail or section views to this drawing from another drawing, and there are changes in the detail or symbol properties in the original drawing.
		Copied view changed	A copied view has been modified.
		Drawing was cloned	The drawing is a cloned drawing. The flag disappears when you save and close the drawing.
			The drawing has been issued. You might want to re-issue drawings that have been sent to site.
		Issued drawing changed	The issued drawing has been edited or otherwise changed.