1. Default screen

When you start CMP and switch to the "All" tab you will see that every item on the DLS and all content included with the game is listed. Finding what you want would be very difficult if you had to manually search through the entire list. However Auran has provided us with a very powerful search feature called "Keywords". On the left side of the screen you will see the "Search" feature. If it is not already expanded then click on the small arrow in the blue circle to expand it. Once expanded you will see the default search is "Name" Expand the dropdown box by clicking on the arrow and select "Keyword" from the list. In this example we will search for an SD40. In the text box next to the drop down box type in SD40 and click the apply button. The list of assets will shrink and show only assets with SD40 in the name.

Now while this has cut the list down considerably there is still a lot of items listed with SD40 in the name. The beauty of CMP's keyword search is you can add different criteria to the search settings. Suppose we wanted to find CN SD40's. No problem. Click the + button and another search setting will appear. Once again from the drop down box select "Keywords" but this time type CN into the text box. The list will shrink again until only the CN SD40's are shown.

Figure 3 Results after second keyword search has been added

Figure 4 List of search types

You can add any number of search criteria to narrow down your content searches.

2. Saving the search

Now that you have created the search and narrowed it down to what you want to find you may want to save the search so that next time you load CMP it is available as a tab. To do this click on the "Save" button and a dialog bog will appear. Type in a meaningful name and click the "Save" button. A new tab will appear with the name you just gave your custom search and switching to the tab will show your searched content.

3. Adding keywords to existing assets

If you want to add keywords to existing assets so that you can find them at a later date using your own specific search criteria then it is very easy to set up even to multiple assets. In this example we will use the assets we used in the previous search. We searched for CN SD40 and it returned five matches. Assuming we want to add a keyword to all five assets then all we need to do is highlight the five assets in CMP right click and select "Edit Keywords" this will bring up a window showing the existing keywords for the assets. Click on the "Add" button and enter a new keyword into the text field. In this case I have added "Canada" as a new keyword. Click on OK to add the keyword.

Figure 7 Multiple assets selected

Figure 8 Edit keywords menu entry

Figure 9 Existing keywords

Figure 10 New keywords entry box

Now that we have added the new keyword you will notice the icon is different to the others. This means that it has not been finalized yet. Close the window by clicking the close button. Select any one of the previous five assets and once again right click and select "Edit Keywords" Now you will notice that "Canada" has been added and now has the same status as the other keywords.

Figure 11 Semi-added keyword

Figure 12 Single asset selected

Figure 13 Keyword added to asset.

4. Searching in Surveyor

Now that you have created searches in CMP to find and organize your assets it is time to do the same in Surveyor in TRS2006. Start TRS2006 and switch to a layout in surveyor. Have a look at the top menu bar for a button with the mouse over text "Content Search Filter". Click on the icon and the "Content Search Filter" will appear. The region setting is based on the category-region tag, the author is based on the creators user name and the era setting is based on the category-era. The large gray box is where we need to type our custom searches. The filters are live filters so if you expand a tab and start playing with the filters you will see the list adjust in real time. In the CMP example we searched for and found the CN SD40's. The procedure in surveyor is very similar. Type in SD40 with the Train tab open and the list will shrink to only show SD40's. Then type a ;CN note the semi colon all added search criteria must be separated by a semi colon.

Figure 14 Content Search Filter icon

Figure 15 Default Content Search Filter

Figure 16 Applying the search criteria to the train tab content

Figure 17 Adding additional search criteria

Now suppose we still had a massive list of items but we only wanted to find content by a certain creator. Type cnr into the author text box and the search will be refined even further as shown in figure 17. Now that we have created our search and applied it to the content we can now save the search for later use. Click on the "Saved Filters" box and a menu will appear listing all the available filters and at the top the two option "Save" and "Delete" are listed. Click on Save and you will be asked to enter a name for the filter. In this case I have use Canadian SD40. Click on the tick icon to save the filter. Now when I expand the filters on the train tab you will see that "Canadian SD40" has been added to the list and can now be applied without opening the Content Search Filter at all.

Figure 18 Saving the search

Figure 19 Newly saved filter now available from filter list in train tab

Now that we are creating our own filters we may want to remove some of the default filters. To do this expand the "Saved Filters" and select delete from the list. Select the filter you want to remove from the list and click the green tick icon and the filter will be removed.

Search filters can be applied to any content in any tab. In figure 21 I have applied a different filter to the Paint tab.

Now in the previous chapter we added a keyword to multiple assets. This keyword can also be filtered for in surveyor. Simply type the keyword into the text box and any content that had the keyword added will be found. We used canada as the keyword and it found five assets in CMP and using the same criteria in surveyor we found the same five assets.

NOTE: When adding keywords try to keep them as unique as possible. For example if you use SD40 as a keyword then the number of returned matches will be far too high to be of any use.

Figure 22 Searching for a specific keyword

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