See Also
Many times when working with large load flow cases, it can be somewhat difficult to locate devices in the
To facilitate locating devices in Simulator, you can use the Find tool to use Simulator’s advanced search engine for finding the device(s) you are looking for. The Find tool is available from the popup menus of almost all case information displays, as well as several of the various information dialogs in Simulator. Anywhere you see a button or menu option labeled Find… you can open the advanced search tool.
Once the Find dialog has been opened, the dialog will automatically adjust to suit the type of device you are searching for. The caption of the dialog should reflect the type of object the dialog is currently attuned to locate. For most devices, such as buses, generators, loads, etc., there will be one list displayed at the bottom of the dialog containing numbers and names of the type of device you are searching for. In some instances, mostly when searching for branch-type devices, the bottom panel is split with a second list is displayed in the right side panel. This list is used to display the possible connections of the bus selected in the first list. For example, if bus number one is selected and it has connections to bus two and bus three, the second list will display the information for bus two and bus three. Thus you can search for a bus in the first list, then choose from the possible connections in the second list to get a specific branch from the list.
Despite what type of device you are trying to find, the first few options and buttons on the dialog will be the same. Sort by Name and Sort by Number allow you to choose how you wish to find a device in the list. If you know the bus number you are looking for, choose Sort by Number. If you know the name, or at least part of the name, that you are looking for, then choose Sort by Name. The list (or first list for branches) will be sorted accordingly.
If you wish to narrow down the list of devices to search through, you have a couple of options for filtering the list before searching through it. First you can make use of the traditional Area/Zone/Owner filters by clicking in the associated check box. If you need to set more specific conditions for filtering the list, you can instead click the Define Filter button to set up an advanced filter. Either one will reduce the number of devices in the list for the search.
Once you have the list set up for your search, you can type in the number or name you wish to find in the text box. If you do not know the exact number or name, you can use wildcards to facilitate the search and find all possible matches for a set of characters or numbers. You can use a question mark (?) to represent a single character wildcard, or an asterisk (*) to represent a multiple character wildcard.
For example, if you want to find bus number 10005, but all you know is the first four digits are 1000, you can type in *1000*, and Simulator will search until it finds the first number that contains those four digits. You can then use the Search Next button (note that pressing Enter is the same as clicking Search Next) to find the next number containing the four numbers, and so on. The same goes for searching by name. If you are looking for bus ACEONE, but all you know is the name contains the string ACE, then you can type in *ACE* and then keep pressing Enter until you find the bus named ACEONE. By using the beginning and ending *, we would also find elements such as NEWACE, because the double * looks for strings that contain ACE anywhere in the string. Note that if you know the first few letters (or numbers), you can narrow down the number of elements found from the search by eliminating the first * from the search string. For example, to find bus ACEONE, we could have instead used ACE*, and this would have gone through all matches that started with ACE, ignoring other elements such as NEWACE. You can also use wildcards in the middle of a string, such as AC*NE, and Simulator will find any name that starts with AC and ends with NE.
Once you have entered a wildcard search, you can also click the Search All button. This will essentially bring up the same Find dialog again, but with the choices narrowed to those that meet your wildcard search.