DRYCAD Suite | User Documentation | v1.0.0
Table of Contents
1. Overview
Picking out every occurrence of the same bolt, bracket, or bushing in a busy assembly one click at a time is the kind of task nobody wants to repeat. DRY0065 has no panel to open and nothing to configure, it runs the moment you launch it, matching part numbers against the top-level components of the active Product and selecting every one that matches.
What it does:
- Runs immediately on launch, no panel, no confirmation step
- Uses your current CATIA selection as the search criteria if one already exists, or prompts you to pick a single component if it doesn’t
- Matches by part number, comparing every top-level component under the active Product’s root
- Supports multiple different part numbers in a single pass if more than one component was selected beforehand
- Replaces the current selection with the full set of matches when it finishes
Supported CAD platforms: CATIA V5
Workspace requirement: An active Product document must be open in CATIA.
2. Getting Started
Prerequisites
- CATIA V5 must be running
- You must be logged into the DRYCAD Suite
- An active Product document must be open in CATIA, and it must contain at least one component
Launching the Tool
DRY0065 is launched from the DRYCAD Suite CommandBar inside CATIA V5. Click the corresponding button to run it. There is no panel to open, the tool performs the selection and closes automatically.
The tool checks the following conditions at startup, and will show an error and close if any fail:
- A valid user session is found, if not: “User not found. Please login and try again.”
- CATIA V5 is running and accessible, if not: “CATIA is not open. Please open CATIA and try again.”
- The active document is a Product, if not, an “Invalid Workspace” error is shown and the tool does not run
Once running, a background watchdog checks every 2 seconds whether CATIA is still running and whether the active document is still a Product. If either condition changes before the tool finishes, it closes immediately without completing the selection.
After the workspace check passes, the tool performs a second, more specific validation of the active Product itself before doing any work:
- If no document is open at all: “No Documents Open”
- If the active Product has no components inside it: “The Product is empty”
- If the active document isn’t a Product Document: “Active Document is not a Product Document”
Any of these three messages appears in a dialog titled Select All Instances, rather than the generic startup dialogs above, since they come from the tool’s own internal check rather than the CommandBar’s shared launch sequence.
3. How It Works
Because DRY0065 has no interface, everything about what gets selected is determined by what was selected, or not selected, the moment you clicked the CommandBar button.
3.1 Starting from an existing selection
If one or more components are already selected in CATIA when you launch the tool, it uses that selection directly as the search criteria, no prompt appears. Each selected component’s part number is read and added to an internal list, with duplicates ignored, so selecting several instances of the same part beforehand doesn’t cause the same part number to be searched twice.
This existing selection is only used as-is when every item in it is a Product with a resolvable part number. If any of the following is true, the tool falls back to prompting you instead:
- The selection contains an item that isn’t a Product (for example, a Body or a face selected directly)
- Any selected Product doesn’t have a part number the tool can read
In both fallback cases, the tool proceeds as if nothing had been selected, see 3.2 below, rather than showing an error. There’s no partial match: it’s all-or-nothing on whether the existing selection is usable.
3.2 Starting from nothing
If nothing usable was selected beforehand, the tool clears the selection and prompts you to click a single component in the CATIA window (“SELECT PRODUCT TO SEARCH…”). If you dismiss the prompt without selecting anything, the tool ends without making any changes to your document. Otherwise, the part number of the component you clicked becomes the sole search criterion.
3.3 Performing the match
Once the search criteria is established, whether from your pre-existing selection or from the single-component prompt, the tool clears the current selection, then walks every component directly under the active Product’s root and adds it to the selection if its part number matches one of the criteria. This comparison happens at the top level of the active assembly; components nested deeper inside sub-assemblies are not individually walked into during this pass. The selection is rebuilt in one batch rather than item by item, which keeps the CATIA tree from refreshing after every single addition and makes the operation noticeably faster on large assemblies.
Why did nothing get selected?
- No component in the active Product’s top level shares a part number with your search criteria
- The component you selected to search for doesn’t have a resolvable part number itself, in which case the search silently does nothing
- You dismissed the “select a component” prompt without clicking anything
4. Examples
Example 1, Selecting hardware with nothing pre-selected
You want to select every washer that shares a part number with one specific washer in the assembly, but you haven’t selected anything yet.
Steps:
- Launch DRY0065 from the CommandBar with no selection active
- When prompted, click on the one washer in the CATIA tree or 3D view
- The tool reads that washer’s part number, then selects every top-level component sharing it
Result: every instance of that washer at the top level of the assembly ends up in the CATIA selection, ready for a bulk operation like a property change or a Bill of Materials check.
Example 2, Extending an existing multi-part selection
You’ve already selected one bolt and one nut in the tree, two different part numbers, before launching the tool.
Steps:
- Select the bolt and the nut together in CATIA (multi-select)
- Launch DRY0065 from the CommandBar
Result: no prompt appears, since the pre-existing selection is valid. The tool reads both part numbers, clears the selection, and reselects every top-level component matching either one, every bolt and every nut, in a single combined selection.
5. Troubleshooting
”User not found. Please login and try again.”
The tool could not identify the logged-in user at startup. Log out of the DRYCAD Suite, log back in, and relaunch.
”CATIA is not open. Please open CATIA and try again.”
The tool launched but could not find a running CATIA V5 process. Make sure CATIA is fully loaded before clicking the CommandBar button.
”Invalid Workspace”
The active document is not a Product. DRY0065 only operates on Product documents. Switch to or open a Product in CATIA, then relaunch.
”No Documents Open”
No CATIA window was available when the tool ran its own internal check on the root Product, even though the earlier workspace check passed. Confirm a Product document is open and active, then relaunch.
”The Product is empty”
The active Product’s root has no components under it at all, so there’s nothing for the tool to search or select. Open a Product that actually contains components.
”Active Document is not a Product Document”
The tool’s own internal check found that the active document isn’t a Product Document. This mirrors the earlier “Invalid Workspace” check, switch to a Product document and relaunch.
The tool closes without selecting anything
This is expected, not a bug, in a few specific situations:
- You were prompted to select a component and dismissed the prompt without clicking anything
- The component you clicked to search for doesn’t have a part number the tool can read
- CATIA closed, or the active document stopped being a Product, while the tool was running, the background watchdog closes it automatically in that case
The selection includes fewer components than expected
Check the following:
- The matching only walks components directly under the active Product’s root, components living inside a nested sub-assembly aren’t matched individually during this pass
- If you pre-selected components before launching, confirm every one of them was a Product with a valid part number; if even one wasn’t, the tool ignored the whole pre-selection and prompted you instead, which may have produced a different search criterion than you intended
6. Version History
| Version | Date | Changes |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0.0 | 2026-06 | Initial release |
DRY0065, Select All Instances | DRYCAD Solutions | v1.0.0