To give an idea of what I mean, here's a screen grab where I've typed "o-ring" into the search box. Trouble is, this results in isolating all components in the assy that have "o-ring" in their file names, leaving them hanging in space, out of context. This does me no good whatever. I'd like to see the entire assy, but with the selected parts somehow highlighted. I was able to do this in another modeling program, and I really miss the functionality.
Is there a way to do what I want that I'm not aware of? A colleague who's worked with SW for 20+ years didn't have any suggestions. Thank you.
You can use Component Selection under Tool menu. I chose the Advanced Select and set Category1 to Custom property and Category2 to Description. Condition would be contains and the value would be your "o-ring". This is a good tool to get familiar with.