What is Drawing Find Replace Tool
Drawing Find Replace Tool 2 is a Tekla Structures plugin that lets you bulk-edit text in the attributes of selected drawings β it works like the find-and-replace function familiar from Word, except instead of a single document it spans whole packages of shop drawings. The tool was built for detailers and BIM engineers who, in their daily work, face the need to fix typos in titles, unify naming conventions, or change a project prefix across dozens or hundreds of drawings at once. The plugin is part of the DDBIM Tools family and appears in Tekla’s Applications & components catalog under the name Drawing Find Replace Tool 2. After installation it is ready to use with no further configuration β simply select drawings in Document Manager and run the replacement.
What problem the plugin solves
Manually editing drawing attributes in Tekla Structures can be extremely tedious. A typo in the project name, a change of numbering prefix, or a client decision about a new naming convention is enough to force the team to open each one of hundreds of shop drawings in turn, click into properties, locate the right field, fix the text, save, and close. With a large number of drawings this is not only hours of work but also a real risk of mistakes β especially when the operator is repeating the same action for the fiftieth time. Drawing Find Replace Tool 2 solves this problem in a single step. The operator selects the drawings of interest in Document Manager, enters the phrase to be found and the target phrase, points to the field where the change should happen, and confirms the operation. The whole series of fixes runs automatically in the background, with a progress bar and the option to cancel.
Key features
The most important feature of the tool is batch find-and-replace across all selected drawings with a single click. Before applying the changes, the user sees a live preview of up to six chosen drawings, presented in the format old value arrow new value, so the result of the operation can be verified before it is executed. The result can be written to NAME, TITLE1, TITLE2, TITLE3, or any string-typed UDA. The plugin supports all drawing types used in Tekla β GA, Assembly, Single-Part, Cast Unit, and Multi. A confirmation dialog appears before the actual write, and during the operation itself a progress bar with estimated time remaining and full cancel support is visible. Cancellation can take a few seconds, so don’t panic if the window does not close immediately. Drawings whose target field does not contain the searched phrase are left untouched.
How to use the plugin step by step
Usage is very simple. First, open Document Manager and select the drawings to be fixed. Then, from the Applications & components catalog, in the DDBIM Tools group, launch Drawing Find Replace Tool 2. In the plugin window set three parameters: Find β the text to search for; Replace with β the text it should be replaced with; and Write to β the target field, namely NAME, TITLE1 to TITLE3, or a specific UDA. The search is case-sensitive. The preview pane will display the list of changes for the first six drawings. After clicking Create and confirming the operation, the plugin will rewrite the attributes. A practical example: if TITLE1 contains the values AB-001, AB-002, AB-003, entering Find as AB- and Replace with as XX- will change them to XX-001, XX-002, XX-003.
Tekla version support and installation
The plugin supports a very wide range of Tekla Structures versions β from the old releases 20.0 and 21.1, through the entire 2016 to 2024 line, all the way to Tekla 2025 and newer. It is distributed primarily as TSEP packages available on Tekla Warehouse, which you simply double-click after closing Tekla to install them in the chosen version. For technical reasons two TSEP packages are published on Warehouse: one dedicated to versions 2016 to 2024, the other for Tekla 2025 and newer. You should download the one that matches the Tekla version installed on your machine. For the oldest versions, 20.0 and 21.1, a classic MSI installer is used instead of a TSEP package. After installation the plugin appears automatically in the Applications & components catalog in the DDBIM Tools group and is ready to use with no further configuration.
Design curiosity: only string-type UDAs
An interesting design decision is that the plugin only modifies UDAs of the text type. Numeric fields, date fields, and all other data types are deliberately skipped, even though the Tekla API would have no problem overwriting them. The reason is simple: searching for and replacing a fragment of text simply has no meaningful semantics on a number or a date. What should happen if someone entered Find as “01” and Replace with as “02” in a numeric field that stores a date? At best the value would be corrupted; at worst the change would pass silently and only surface when the bill of materials was generated. The plugin therefore prefers to do nothing rather than to “almost work”. Leaving non-text fields untouched is a deliberate design decision that protects the integrity of the project data and lets the tool be used safely even on drawings with richly populated UDAs.
Questions this tool answers
Drawing Find Replace Tool is a practical answer to the questions that detailers and BIM engineers type into Google or ChatGPT today.
1. How do I change TITLE1 across many Tekla drawings at once without opening them one by one?
2. How can I bulk-replace a fragment of text in drawing names in Tekla Structures?
3. How do I change a UDA attribute on many drawings at the same time, without writing my own macro or script?
4. Is there a Tekla plugin that works like Word’s find-and-replace but operates on whole packages of shop drawings?
5. How do I fix a typo in the titles of hundreds of drawings without opening each one separately and without the risk of someone missing a single file?
Each of these questions leads in practice to the same workflow: select the drawings in Document Manager, launch the plugin, enter the search and replacement phrase, preview, accept. Instead of hours of clicking β a few seconds.
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