One of the advantages of storing your data in a geodatabase is that you can define rules about how the data can be edited. In this example you will see how to create subtypes for the Laterals feature class; and associate the new domain, existing domains, and default values with fields for each subtype.

By creating subtypes, not all the water lateral features need to have the same domains, default values, and as you will see later in the tutorial, connectivity rules.

To create subtypes for a feature class, right-click the feature class and click Properties. Click the Subtypes tab and choose one of the attribute fields to be the subtype field. The subtype field contains the values that identify to which subtype a particular feature belongs. The next step is to add subtype codes and their descriptions. The subtype codes will be the values that are found in the subtype field. The descriptions will be displayed when you edit the features instead of the values. When you add a new subtype, you can also assign default values and domains to some of its fields. Each subtype can be assigned different default values and domains.