Edit feature relationships

In the Attributes pane , you can create and remove relationships between selected features, and add new relationships between selected features and nonspatial records in a table. The associated features must participate in the same relationship class.

To learn more about relationship classes, see Geodatabase relationship class fundamentals.

Add selected features to a relationship

Adding selected features to a relationship associates them as related features when they both participate in the same relationship class. For example, you can select a feature-linked annotation feature and establish a relationship with a polyline feature that participates in the annotation feature class.

1. On the Edit tab, in the Selection group, click Attributes .
2. Click Select and select the annotation feature.

   The selection list appears in the pane.

3. Expand the origin and destination feature items you want to edit.
4. Click the origin feature item to which you want to associate the other feature, for example, a polygon feature.
5. Right-click the related feature item you want to add to the relationship, for example, a feature-linked annotation feature, and click Add Selected To Relationship .

   In this example, if the annotation was previously linked to another feature, the former link is removed.

Note:

Feature-linked annotation uses a composite relationship to link text to a feature. The origin (or primary) feature is the geographic feature, and the destination (or child) feature is the associated annotation feature.

To learn more, see Annotation

Add a feature to a relationship

Adding a new origin feature to a relationship creates a new record with default geodatabase attribute values in a destination nonspatial table for the selected feature. For example, by selecting a tax parcel polygon feature you can add a related record in an Owners table.

The table must participate in a relationship class as the destination, and the feature class participates as the origin.

Tip:

To automatically create a new record when you create a feature, create a table template and add the template to the feature template.

1. On the Edit tab, in the Selection group, click Attributes .
2. Click Select and select the origin feature for you which want to add a related record.

   The selection list appears in the pane.

3. Expand the origin and destination feature items you want to edit.
4. Click the origin feature item to which you want to add a relationship, for example, a tax parcel feature.
5. Right-click the related destination nonspatial table, for example, the owners table, and click Add New To Relationship .

Remove a feature from relationship

Removing a feature or record from a relationship separates it from the related feature or record. The actual feature or record is not deleted. You can remove one or all destination relationships with an origin feature.

For simple relationships, the foreign key in the destination object is replaced with a null value. For relationships stored in a separate table, the row corresponding to the relationship is deleted from the relationship table.

1. On the Edit tab, in the Selection group, click Attributes .
2. Click Select and select the annotation feature.

   The selection list appears in the pane.

3. Expand the origin and destination feature items you want to edit.
4. Do one of the following:
   • Right-click the origin feature item, for example, a tax parcel polygon feature and click Remove All From Relationship .
   • Right-click an individual relationship, for example, a row in the owners table, and click Remove From Relationship .