Allow Invalid Characters in CU Naming

You can change the default behavior of Designer to allow invalid characters in the name of a compatible unit (CU). To do this, you will have to create a registry key in Windows.

Editing the Windows registry can have serious and unexpected consequences, including total system failure. Only an administrator should perform the following steps.

Open Windows Registry Editor. You can do this by clicking Start > Run. Type 'regedit' and click OK. On Windows 7, you can type 'regedit' in the Start menu search bar. Double-click the regedit.exe file to begin.
Navigate the Registry Editor to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Miner and Miner > Designer8.
If the CU Editing key does not exist, right-click the Designer 8 folder and select New > Key to create it.
Right-click the CU Editing key folder and select New > String Value.
Name the value InvalidCharacterOverride, paying special attention to name the value exactly as shown.
Right-click the value. Select Modify....
Enter $^*+? in the value data field.
Close Registry Editor.
If open, restart ArcCatalog.

You should now be able to use $, ^, *, +, and ? in the names of CUs.

Using invalid characters in the names of CUs will disallow the use of wildcards in CU searching. Search terms that include the asterisks (*) will search specifically for the * character. For example, with the default invalid character setting, the search term "*Pole" could return results of APole, BPole, ABCPole, and so on. If you use invalid characters, the search term "*Pole" will only search for a specific CU named *Pole.