Adding Relationships in the Manage Elements Dialog

In this basic level tutorial we will get acquainted with the Manage elements dialog. It is mainly used to generate large quantities of multidimensional relationships on one go, but it offers other functionalities, too.

This tutorial relies on entity classes and entities created in First Relationship. Make sure you have Spine Database Editor with the tutorial data open, and off we go.

Bonding Fish with the Manage Elements Dialog

The Manage elements dialog can be accessed by right-clicking the Bond class in Entity tree and selecting Manage elements… from the popup menu.

The left side of the dialog shows available elements for each dimension while the right side contains a table of existing entities in the Bond class. The dialog works such that it creates all possible combinations of the elements that are selected in Available elements when the button is clicked.

Let’s utilize the machinery to create all possible bonds where Cheep-Cheep is the first element! Select Cheep-Cheep from the left column in Available entities. Next, select the first element name in the second column. Then, while holding the Shift key, select the last element. Shift makes the selection extend between the previously selected element (the first one) and the element that was selected last. Click on to create the new entities in Existing entities.

Does a bond between Cheep-Cheep and Cheep-Cheep make sense? Perhaps not, so let’s remove that entity. Select the row containing the non-sensical entity in Existing entities and click . This gets us rid of it.

Try creating different combinations of bonds between the fish! Note, that in addition to Shift, you can use Ctrl to select multiple elements in Available elements, though it works a bit differently, as you may notice. You can always remove entities with the button.

Once satisfied playing The God of Bond Creation and Destruction, press Ctrl+Enter or click OK to accept the changes. If in doubt, cancel by pressing Esc or by clicking Cancel.

That is it! You are now a certified manager of elements.

Committing Changes

None of the modifications we did in this tutorial are required by the other tutorials, so you might as well close the Database Editor and select Discard changes and close from the confirmation dialog. However, if you want to keep your changes, select Commit and close instead. In that case, follow Committing Changes on how to write a commit message. The editor will close once you accept the Commit changes dialog.