How to Find and Replace Text in BricsCAD

Quick answer: FIND opens a dialog where you can search for text, replace it, and optionally zoom in on each matching instance.

Setting Find and Replace Options

1. Launch FIND; the Find and Replace dialog opens.
2. Click Options.
3. Tick the options you want in the Find and Replace Options dialog.
4. Click OK.

Finding Text

1. Launch FIND; the Find and Replace dialog opens.
2. Optionally set your Find and Replace options.
3. Optionally click Select Entities to build a specific selection set to search within; if you skip this, the entire drawing is searched instead. The dialog closes temporarily while you select, right-click to finish, and the Search in field then reads “Current Selection” instead of “Entire Drawing”.
4. Type your search text into the Find Text String field.
5. Click Find; the first matching text entity’s content displays in the Search results panel.
6. Optionally click Zoom To to zoom the drawing in on that entity.
7. Repeat the Find step to locate further instances of the same search text, or start over from setting options to search for something different.
8. Press Esc or click Close to stop.

Worth noting: the source’s own procedure for this workflow includes a step reading “Do one of the following,” with no actual options listed beneath it before the next step, likely an editing gap in Octave’s documentation rather than something intentionally left out.

Replacing Text

1. Launch FIND; the Find and Replace dialog opens.
2. Optionally set your Find and Replace options.
3. Optionally click Select Entities to search within a specific selection instead of the entire drawing, the same way as when finding text.
4. Type your search text into the Find Text String field.
5. Type the replacement text into the Replace with field and press Enter; every matching text entity gets listed.
6. Either click an item in the list to highlight that entity in the drawing, then click Replace to swap just that one, or click Replace All to swap every match at once.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I search only part of my drawing instead of the whole thing? Yes, click Select Entities before searching to build a specific selection; without it, the entire drawing gets searched.

What’s the difference between clicking Replace and Replace All? Replace swaps just the currently highlighted match. Replace All swaps every matching instance in one step.

How do I jump straight to a found text entity in the drawing? Click Zoom To after finding a match, and the drawing zooms in on that entity.

Do I need to set Find and Replace options every time? No, they’re optional and persist as you continue searching; you only need to revisit them if you want to change how the search behaves.