Find Datasheets

Twenty browser tabs, two vendor login walls, and an hour later you have one datasheet, maybe the right revision. A document hunt does the searching; you keep the judgment.

Start with your library

On a part's page, the Find documents panel lists In your library: the documents you already have that print the part's catalog number, marked with a check and the page, or that cover its product family. Each row shows the revision date the document prints. Press Link to attach one. When nothing in your library matches, the panel is one line that says so, with the web search beside it. The same panel sits on an equipment entry's page and in a submittal's equipment drawer.

Search the web

From the web searches only for what your library lacks. When a library datasheet already prints the catalog number, the button reads Search the web for a manual, and Search for both looks for a datasheet too. The datasheet and the manual each get their own search, which uses the part's product name, description, category and the manufacturer's website when the part has them. When a search finds nothing for one of them, a dashed row says so in that document's place, with Search again. A document you delete from your library is never suggested to you again unless you upload it yourself. Some manufacturers' own libraries are asked before any web search. A Schneider Electric, Square D or APC part gets its datasheet straight from se.com. An Allen-Bradley part gets the spec sheet and installation instruction for its bulletin from Rockwell's literature library, shown as family documents. Your manufacturer aliases count, so a part typed AB reaches Rockwell. A progress row shows the search, and Stop ends it at any point.

Review what it found

Nothing enters your library without a person adding it.

1. Open a row's file name to preview the actual document.
2. Each row says how it matches: a check when the file prints the catalog number, a circle for a family document, a cross when the automated check found it unrelated. It names the site it came from, says whether that is the manufacturer's, and shows the printed revision date. The best rows come first: the catalog number in the file, then the manufacturer's site, then the newest revision. Unrelated rows sit last.
3. Press Add to accept it, changing the type first if it guessed wrong.
4. Press Dismiss on anything that misses, in either section. Undo puts it back for a few seconds. A dismissed library document stays off that part's list, and dismissing the library datasheet lets the next web search look for one.

Some manufacturer sites refuse automated downloads. A row it couldn't fetch says why, such as a refused request or a web page with no document link on it. Press Try again, or open the link, save the PDF yourself, and press Upload file. The upload attaches to the part and settles the row.

Accepted documents attach to the part and join the Document Library, where the usual catalog-number highlighting picks them up. See Part documents. Search again reruns the web search later, after a vendor publishes the revision you were waiting for.

Work through a backlog

The Missing datasheet and Missing manual filters in the Parts Library give you the exact list of parts worth hunting. Working through a long one? A connected agent can queue hunts for up to 25 parts in one call, or hand over PDFs it found itself. Every candidate still waits for your accept, here or in the chat with your agent. See Connect an agent.

A hunt that comes back empty says so in one line, and Add document in the part's Documents section still uploads a file or links one from your library, so a dead end costs you seconds, not the afternoon.