Properties

A property defines a field, such as List price or Release date. Its assignment belongs to a resource; its values and conditions belong to the selected snapshot. Resources must be a Class or below a Class to own properties. Structural Resource groups cannot own them.

Prerequisite for global authoring: Editor or higher Project access. Linked occurrences are read-only; open the original before editing. A Layer-only Editor has narrower contextual write rights. See Workspace.

Add a property

1. Select a data-owning resource and the intended snapshot in Details.
2. In Fields, use the add control between cards or after the last card. With no cards, use the empty-fields add control.
3. In Add property, choose Value or Reference.
4. Enter a label. For Value, choose a datatype; for Reference, choose its reference Class and multiplicity.
5. Save the dialog. Expand the new card, enter its Default, and use Details Save to persist ordinary value drafts.

If the resource has no initial data container, the creation flow can establish one. Adding the property establishes its presence in the selected snapshot; it does not give every other resource a value. Aliases already bound to a property do not allow another property to be added.

Property families are project-wide

Repeated normalized labels in one Project identify one property family. For example, assigning List price to Aster Pro in the fictional Product Atlas demo reuses the family assigned to Aster Mini. Its kind, datatype, multiplicity, and reference Class are shared, while each resource has its own values. The fixture defines both assignments already; use an additional practice resource if following the add workflow.

The dialog shows Existing property family and locks the matching definition when adding another assignment. A resource cannot have duplicate assignments of the same family. Renaming an existing family to another family's label is blocked; renaming is not a merge.

Use the card's Property options > Edit property to change metadata. The Project-wide property family notice means the change affects every assignment, including under other Layers. Existing data and rules can block incompatible changes. Review dependencies first; do not treat a datatype edit as a local conversion of one field.

Value datatypes

The app fixes multiplicity for these Value types: the scalar types above are single-value, while Email, Tag, URL, Phone, User, and File require multiple-value support. The Allow multiple values control is therefore not a free choice for every datatype. Reference properties separately support one or multiple resources.

Enter numbers as decimal amounts; do not include currency symbols as a substitute for an amount. Geolocation requires both coordinates, with latitude between -90 and 90 and longitude between -180 and 180. It is not an address lookup or map picker. Its condition operators are limited to is set and is empty.

Timestamp controls capture an instant. Project timezone settings also affect time-based display and calculations; inspect the Project timezone when comparing dates across users. Do not assume that changing timezone changes existing timestamps. See Workspace and Snapshots.

Formatted text

Select the formatted-text preview, edit in its modal, and select Save. This save persists the value immediately, unlike ordinary Details drafts.

The toolbar supports headings, font/size, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, text and highlight colors, subscript/superscript, lists, quotes, links, indentation, alignment, direction, and clearing formatting. Unsupported or unsafe formatting is removed.

Field cards, search, conditions, and calculated View outputs use readable plain text rather than preserving the full editor presentation. Embedded images, video, code blocks, inline code, and mentions are not supported. Use File properties for documents and images.

Reference properties

A Reference property relates a resource to active Value groups or Values below a Class in the same Project. The Class is the anchor that defines the eligible branch; the Class itself is not a selectable reference target.

The Product Atlas fixture defines Available markets on the Products Class with Markets as its reference Class, selecting Europe including its descendants and Eastreach. As an additional practice exercise, assign the same family to an individual product and select Northland, Westhaven, or Europe with an appropriate scope. This relates the product to market resources; it does not copy or move those resources.

The property dialog offers Allow multiple resources. A selected Value group can represent multiple targets through its scope even when you choose one selector entry.

Reference selector scopes

These are structural selections, not fixed lists of copied data. Their membership follows the current active tree. Inactive targets and inactive Class branches are excluded. A missing or unavailable target can remain visible as a warning rather than silently becoming a different reference.

For Europe with Northland and Westhaven beneath it, Selected resource means Europe, Direct children only means Northland and Westhaven, and Leaf descendants only selects terminal descendants even if deeper groups are added later.

Defaults, conditions, and snapshots

In a field card, Default is the ordinary starting value for the selected snapshot. Use Add condition for an override, or Add condition list to generate explicitly selected contextual rows. Later matching scalar conditions can replace earlier ones; reference conditions support Replace or Change with Add/Subtract behavior. Child conditions depend on their parent.

Condition lists do not automatically gain rows when future resources are added. Use Conditions for rule building, ordering, and condition-list workflows.

Definitions are shared across snapshots, but their presence and values can differ. An empty value is not the same as a property that is unavailable in a snapshot. A field can exist on a resource without being present in every period. Check the selected snapshot before adding a duplicate or diagnosing missing data. See Snapshots.

Editing with a Layer active

The card's Default input is contextual under a Layer. Saving it creates or updates a Layer-conditioned override rather than replacing the unconditional All data default. A property created in a Layer can have only a contextual starting value and no unconditional default.

Property metadata still applies globally. Field and condition reordering is disabled while a Layer is active; switch to All data for global ordering. Changing or deleting a Layer does not automatically rewrite conditions previously authored with it. See Layers.

Inspect a property family

1. Return Resources to Normal mode and select its property-family entry.
2. Review General for the canonical label and datatype/reference signature.
3. Expand Connections and the relevant group.
4. Select a connection to navigate to its resource/field/condition context, Layer administration, or saved View.

Connections are grouped as Resource assignments, Aliases, Conditional values, Condition rules, Layers, and Views. Counts are displayed before condition groups load. Large condition groups show at most the first 500 connections; the count can exceed the visible list.

To rename the family from this view, change Label and use Details Save. Existing rules and saved Views keep their connection to the renamed family. The family view displays its type signature but does not provide a datatype-changing control; use Edit property on an assignment for the metadata dialog.

Reorder, clear, or remove

In All data, use a field's drag handle to reorder it in the current snapshot. Condition segments have their own drag handles. Linked Details and an active Layer disable structural reordering.

Ordinary Details changes require pane-level Save. In resource Table mode, Clear empties a cell draft, while Remove property removes that resource's assignment and all its values and conditions across snapshots. It preserves the family and assignments elsewhere. Removing a pinned column only changes your grid display.

The Details card menu currently offers Edit property, not a full property deletion or snapshot-visibility management menu. Do not look for a hide/delete command there or infer it from a blank field. File cells are not editable in Table mode, so there is no grid removal workflow for File assignments. See Files for attachment removal.