You can create relationships between elements in one of the following ways: 


To draw a path on the diagram pane

  1. In the Diagram palette, click the needed relationship.
  2. Select the source shape of the path in the diagram pane.

  3. Drop the path to the target shape.

    • When drawing a new path, the optimal route is chosen automatically (the path avoids other shapes).
    • When drawing a path between two elements, those shapes are bordered with a red or blue rectangle. The red highlight indicates that the path can not be drawn between these shapes. The blue highlight allows a path to be drawn. You can disable this highlighting in the Environment Options dialog under the Diagram node by setting the Show Manipulation Highlighting property value to false. For more information, see Customizing environment options.

    • To draw a path faster, use the smart manipulator toolbar.

To create relationships between selected elements

  1. In the Model Browser, diagram pane, or table, right-click an element.
  2. Choose Create Relation > Outgoing / Incoming and select the desired relationship type. The Create New <relation name> To / From dialog opens.
  3. Do one or more of the following:
    • In the Model Browser, click the element to / from which you want to create a relationship.
    • On a diagram, click an element to / from which you want to create a relationship.

    • In the Create New <relation name> To / From dialog, click . In the opened Create New <relation name> To / From dialog, choose the element to / from which you want to create a relationship.

      If you do not know the exact location of the needed element, you can search for it in this step.

  4. Click OK.

The Active Selection area shows the elements currently selected in the active diagram, table, matrix, map, or Model Browser. It changes with each click of the different elements when you switch to another diagram.


To choose one or several elements at a time, do one of the following

  • Press Shift and click as many elements as you need.
  • Click and drag the mouse pointer to select as many elements as you need.

The multiple selection works in one area at a time. For example, diagram pane, table, matrix, relation map, or Model Browser. If you need to select elements from several locations, you need to pin your current selection.

The Pinned Selection area shows the elements you choose to pin from the Active Selection. This is needed when you want to select elements from different locations (for example, you need to select elements from different diagrams, or from the diagram and Model Browser). In this case, you should pin each selection.


To create a relationship in the Specification window

  1. Open the element's Specification window and select the Relations property group.
  2. Click the Create Outgoing button or Create Incoming button and then select the desired relation type from the list.
  3. In the Create New <relation name> To/ From dialog select an element to/ from which you want to create a relation and click OK.
    The relation appears in the Relations property group.

When the relationship is created, you can visually identify its direction (source and target elements) under the Containment tree > Relations.

The arrow between source and target elements appears if the path is created using only directed relationships.

Identifying the relationship's direction