Parent-Child Relationship Between Objects

When you attach one object to another, you create a parent-child relationship between the two objects. The attached object is the child of the object to which it is attached. The following table describes how the various commands support the parent-child relationships.

Command	Parent-Child Relationship Support
Move	When the parent moves, all child objects move with it. When a child moves, the parent does not move.
Delete	When the parent is deleted, all child objects are deleted. When a child is deleted, the parent is not deleted.
Chop	When the parent is chopped such that there is only one resultant shape, the parent-child relationship is retained. When the parent is chopped such that there are more than one resultant shapes, one of the chopped shapes becomes the parent of the child. When a child is chopped such that there is only one resultant shape, the parent-child relationship is retained. When a child is chopped such that there are more than one resultant shapes, all the shapes attach as child to the parent.
Yank	When the child is selected and the parent is not selected, the child is yanked. After the Paste command, the new object is independent. When the parent is selected and the child is not selected, the parent is yanked. After the Paste command, the new object does not have any child. When the child and parent are selected, both the child and parent are yanked. After the Paste command, the parent-child relationship is retained in the new object.

You use the Attach/Detach command to establish parent-child relationships. The command fully support boundary objects. When the parent is deleted, the child is also deleted.

The Attach/Detach command provides the following support for blockages:

Cyclical relationships are not allowed. For example, if object A is a parent to object B, then object B cannot be a parent for object A.
An instance or cluster cannot be a child to blockage objects.
If a blockage object is a child object to an instance or cluster, during attach the ownership information is updated, but the explicit parent-child relationship is not retained.
If a blockage object is attached as a child to any object other than the instance or cluster, the explicit parent-child relationship is retained.
A blockage object can be a parent to any other objects, such as text labels.
A blockage object cannot be owned by an instance and be a child to any other object. In this case, the owner-blockage relationship takes precedence to the parent-child relationship.

Virtuoso Layout Suite XL: Basic Editing User Guide
Product Version IC23.1, November 2023