Catalog Search

A catalog is a Physna tenant that other tenants may search into, such as a supplier catalog. pcli2 catalog takes an asset from one of your own tenants and finds matching parts in a catalog: "does a supplier already sell this part?"

Catalog search is enabled by Physna per customer. If it has not been enabled for you, pcli2 catalog list prints nothing and warns, and the match commands exit 68.

Table of Contents

• Which Catalogs You Can Search
• Matching an Asset
• Output
• What Is Never Searched
• Exit Codes

Which Catalogs You Can Search

pcli2 catalog list
pcli2 catalog list --format csv --headers

NAME,DESCRIPTION,ID,ROLE
catalog,Supplier Catalog,a0d94427-d7eb-4b28-b624-49c68ce83686,search

The list is read from the server on every run, so a catalog Physna has just enabled shows up without clearing any cache.

Matching an Asset

The asset is named the usual way, by --path or --uuid, in the active tenant or the one given with --tenant. --in names the catalog; with only one catalog it can be left out. PCLI2_CATALOG sets it for every command, and is checked the same way.

# Visually similar catalog parts, the top 20
pcli2 catalog visual-match --path /Home/Parts/bracket.stl --limit 20

# Geometric matches of 90% or better, as CSV
pcli2 catalog geometric-match --path /Home/Parts/bracket.stl --threshold 90 --format csv --headers

# Part search in a named catalog
pcli2 catalog part-match --uuid <ASSET_UUID> --in catalog

Every command returns at most --limit matches (default 100) and warns when there were more.

Metadata search and the combined search are not offered: Physna refuses the first for a catalog, and the second currently fails on the server.

Output

The CSV has the same columns as the corresponding asset command, with a CATALOG column after the candidate's path:

REFERENCE_ASSET_PATH,CATALOG,CANDIDATE_ASSET_PATH,MATCH_PERCENTAGE,REFERENCE_ASSET_UUID,CANDIDATE_ASSET_UUID,COMPARISON_URL

part-match has FORWARD_MATCH_PERCENTAGE,REVERSE_MATCH_PERCENTAGE in place of MATCH_PERCENTAGE; visual-match has no score column. The comparison link opens both assets side by side in the web application.

JSON output is one object: searchType, referenceAsset, catalog and matches.

What Is Never Searched

--in accepts only the catalogs catalog list shows. If your account can see several tenants (production and staging, or more than one company), naming any of them that is not a catalog is refused before anything is searched, so one tenant's search is never answered with another tenant's data. As a further guard, a match the server returns from outside the chosen catalog is dropped, with a warning.

The asset must be in one of your own tenants; an asset of the catalog itself cannot be searched from.

Exit Codes