Creating Relationships in

Primavera P6
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 Creating Relationships in Primavera P6

In this lesson, you will be getting intimate with relationships in P6. You will be adding
relationships to the activities you created in previous lessons. You will see that P6 will let
yoy create relationships in different ways.

The screen shown here should look familiar by now. It’s the Activities screen, setup as
follows – activities list on the left, Gantt chart on the right and activity details view on the
bottom half. This setup is a typical way to view your project’s activities. But P6 has other
ways to view activities, one of which you will see right now. Click the Activity Network
icon on the Toolbar.

This is called the Activity Network view and it is another way to graphically view your
project. In the left pane, you see your project’s WBS and it the right pane you see a network
view of the project’s activities shown and zoom in close, you will select a WBS node on the
left. Click the MFE.B.1 – Design Wbs node to see the activities within that node.

Adding relationships to your project is essentially ordering the project’s activities to occur
in a specified sequence. For example, for the 2 activities shown below, you will cretae a
relationship between them indicating that A1010 should start after A1000 is complete.
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 Creating Relationships in Primavera P6
Select activity A1000. Select Sucessors button on the command bar to display the assign
successors dialog box. In the window, highlight Design building to be a successor for
initiate building system. Click on the Assign button and cloce the window.

Nice work! The activities are now linked. You have probably noticed a few changes to your
screen . when you use the “Successor button”. A Finish-to-Start relationship is created, as
shown by the arrow now drawn between the 2 yellow boxes. Finish-to-Start is one of the
four relationships you can use. It tells you that A1010 will start only after activity A1000 is
finished. Also notice the information on the Relationship tab has changed. An entry for
A1010 shows up in the successors list for A1000 with a FS (Finish-to-Start) relationship
type. Having A1010 as a successor means A1010 will be scheduled after A1000 is done.
Click on the Gantt Chart icon on the Toolbar.

Once again you are back to the Activity List and Gantt Chart view. You have just seen how
to work with relationships in the Network view, now you will learn how to create
relationships in this view. Click on activity A1010 to select it.

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 Creating Relationships in Primavera P6
This time you will create a Start-to Start relationship between activities A1010 and A1020.
Click the Assign button in the Successor’s pane.

The “Assign successor” window opens and displays a list of your project’s activities. Select
activity A1020 in the assign successor window.

Click the Assign button to add A1020 as a successor.

The “Assign successors” window stays open in case you would like to assign more than
one successor. You will have to close it to continue.

Now you will notice that activity A1020 is now listed in the successors pane. When you
create a relationship in P6 as you just did, by default the relationship type is set to FS.
However, there are 4 different types of relationships you can create between activities. You

will learn about them now. Click the “Relationship Type” dropdown in the Successors
pane.

To learn about a relationship type, hover an entry in the drop down box. When you are
done click on FF in the list to select it.
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 Creating Relationships in Primavera P6
Excellent! You have created a Finish-to-Finish relationship between activities A1010 and
A1020. Did you know you can viwe your relationships graphically on the Gantt chart?

Click the Relationship Lines button on the Toolbar.

You have turned on the Relationship Lines. On the Gantt chart, you will notice
relationship arrows representing the 2 relationships you have created in this lesson. The
first one is a Finish-to-Start, and the second on is a Finish-to-Finish.

Congratulations! You have completed this lesson– Creating Relationships in P6. You are
ready to move on to the next lesson. Good luck and keep learning!

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