Uncountable offers multiple searching and filtering tools to help you efficiently navigate and analyze your data. These tools are designed to accommodate various types of searches, whether you’re focusing on a specific project, exploring multiple projects or material families, or looking for the best options to achieve your experimental goals. This article provides an overview of these capabilities to help you make the most of Uncountable’s features.

Searching Within a Project 

From a Project Dashboard, the standard configuration (Experiment View) displays experiments as a listing of tiles. Uncountable users can search within that project by clicking the “Add Filter” button at the top of the page. These filters enable you to search by fields such as experiment, input, input category, output, or calculation. 

Filters in the Uncountable platform are also additive, allowing for more refined searches as you layer multiple filters. 

For example, if you need to find experiments within a project that involve Polymer A and exhibit a calculated tear strength between 2 and 4 kN/m, you can achieve this by using two filters. Start by adding an input filter to specify that Polymer A is present (i.e., Polymer A does not equal 0). Next, add an output filter for tear strength, setting the range between 2 and 4 kN/m. This combination of filters will narrow down the results to only those experiments that meet both criteria.

Once you have refined your search, you can also compare experiments using the Compare feature. First, select experiments to analyze by clicking the individual experiments or clicking the checkbox to select all. Then, click the “Compare” button.

This tool provides a side-by-side comparison of the inputs, calculations, and measurements of selected experiments.

Note: Using this method searches data within the selected project and child projects. To search at a higher or lower level within a parent project, navigate back to the Project Dashboard and select the desired level. For example, searching within “Child Project 3” will not include results from the Parent Project or two other subprojects. To include this data, you would need to select a higher level project and filter from there.

Searching Across Multiple Projects or Material Families

To broaden your search to include multiple projects or material families, first switch your project listing display from Experiment View to Experiment List. In this view, experiments are displayed in rows instead of tiles. This configuration offers a sub-entity view, allowing users to add custom columns to view and compare experiment details such as creator, name, classifications, and material family. 

Adding Custom Columns:

Uncountable users can add custom columns to an Experiment View listing in two ways. First, you can click “List” and select “Set Columns”. In this modal, you can add, remove, or rename columns. 

You can also add columns directly from filters, by clicking the columns icon next to the desired filter. 

By clicking on the column heading, a dropdown menu allows you to sort the listing by that column in ascending or descending order. Selecting “Add Filter” generates a filter based on that column. You can also reset the column width, add a new column, or remove it entirely.

Using Quick Filters:

In the Experiment List view, you will also notice pill filters at the top of the listing. Toggling these Quick Filters on and off quickly adds and removes filters, allowing you to expand or limit your search. Turning off all filters allows you to search across all projects and material families. The pill filters include:

• This Material Family: Includes experiments within the same material family.
• This Project: Includes only experiments within the current project.
• Show Archived: Includes archived experiments.
• Type: Filters by type (recipe, quality recipe, quality recipe (RM), lot, test sample, build & analytical recipe)

For more information on Quick Filters, refer to the Quick Filters helpsite article.

In addition to Quick Filters, Uncountable users can further refine their search using the search bar or by clicking the “Filters” button to add additional filters. Filters are additive, meaning that adding more filters helps you to further refine your search results.

Example Scenario:

Consider the following example scenario searching within a project and across multiple projects or material families. In this case, we will search for experiments that meet specific criteria: a density between 2-2.5 mg/ml and a tear strength greater than 30.

1. Begin by adding the “This Material Family” Quick Filter to limit your search to experiments within the current material family.
   
2. Add a second filter to include all experiments with a density between 2-2.5 mg/ml.
   
3. Add a third filter to narrow down the results to experiments with a tear strength greater than 30. 

4. Some filters have the option to include additional information. Clicking on “Conditions Match” opens a window where you can provide more specific information for the output filter, such as the aging temperature or aging time. In this example, we will filter by tear strength with an aging time of 7 days.

5. Next, we can add a custom column for the density by clicking the columns icon next to the density filter. This allows us to see the displayed densities for each experiment in the listing.

6. Once you can see the densities, you may want to expand your search to include other projects or material families. Removing the “This Material Family” filter will broaden the search to include all experiments across all material families that meet the specified density and tear strength ranges.

7. Once you have added all relevant filters, you can then select experiments and compare them using the Compare tool.

Objective Search Tool

When searching with specific goals in mind, Uncountable users can rely on the project dashboard search tools and filters to find specific experiments. However, sometimes you may want to conduct a more generalized search with approximate objectives in mind. In these cases, the Uncountable platform also offers the Objective Search tool. 

The Objective Search is useful for users aiming to achieve specific goals, even in cases where exact matches may not be necessary. This flexible and exploratory search method identifies the most suitable experiments based on specified criteria known as a specification, or spec. A spec outlines desired outputs with their corresponding conditions and goals. For further details, refer to the specs article.

Using Objective Search:

First, open the Objective Search tool by selecting Calculate > Objective Search from the Uncountable toolbar.

Next, begin by establishing your goals. This involves setting an output, defining its priority, assigning it a spec with conditions, such as limits. In the example below, the spec includes a desired range for MFI and specific gravity with minimal scorch, maximal tensile strength, and good part quality.

Last, input your desired specifications and conditions by clicking “Get Results”. The tool then scans through available data to identify experiments that closely align with your specific goals. 

Experiments that best match the specification are ranked in the Top Results table. Cells highlighted in green are outputs which meet the desired spec goals. The Objective Search tool also presents results that may not precisely meet all specified criteria but are deemed close matches. These cells are highlighted in red.

In the example below, none of the experiments had MFI values within the desired range. However, since the MFI values were close to that range, and because they met other criteria, they are still included in the search results.

Expanding an Objective Search

Additionally, Uncountable users have the option to include experiments in other projects that meet the defined spec goal by selecting “Show Recipes Outside Project”. This exploratory Objective Search feature can be helpful for identifying relevant experiments beyond the scope of a single project.

Limiting an Objective Search

Although the Objective Search tool provides generalized results, users can also choose to limit their search results by adding a filter. These filters act as constraints or requirements and are used to ensure a certain criteria is always met. 

To add a filter or filters to your Objective Search, click the “Add Filter” beneath the spec. This will refresh your Top Results and provide you with an updated list of experiments that best suit your spec and requirements. In the example below, a filter was added to ensure that all recipes contain Carbon Black High Grade.