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I'm quite new to GIS technology so pardon me if I make any mistakes or use the wrong terms here.

So, I got a map, with point layer A, B, C.

A is the main point layer. I would like to make something like this but got no idea how I'm gonna do this.

When I start an edit session, click on a point in layer A, delete it, all surrounding object within a radius of r meters in layer B and C would be deleted as well.

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Are you looking for a Manual or Automated approach? What License Level is your ArcMap at? – Mapperz♦ Aug 10 '11 at 2:14
I dont quite get what you meant by "Manual or Automated". I'm having ArcInfo so probably can use all the resources. – Nicholas Aug 10 '11 at 3:41
See answer to your question by blah238 'manual vs automated' – Mapperz♦ Aug 10 '11 at 4:21

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What you are asking could easily be accomplished interactively (manually) by first selecting the desired point feature in layer A, doing a Select by Location to select the features of layers B and C that intersect the selected feature in layer A using a buffer ("search distance" on the Select by Location dialog) of r meters, and then deleting all of the selected features.

A similar approach could be also be used with geoprocessing tools in ModelBuilder or a Python/arcpy script tool to automate the process, though you would need to add a check that ensures that layer A has exactly 1 feature selected before continuing or you might end up deleting everything.

Also, in ArcGIS 10, if you set up a script tool or model with no parameters and place it on a toolbar, it will run immediately without user interaction.

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or a pure ArcObjects script (my favorite!) – Ragi Yaser Burhum Aug 10 '11 at 4:43
I guess your answer is the manual approach. But I couldnt find such things as "delete" in the toolbox. Like what Ragi suggested above, would be awesome, I have thought of that but couldnt really find a way to do it, barely know how to code with arcobject. – Nicholas Aug 10 '11 at 5:59
My first paragraph was the manual approach, the second and third were about automation. Data Management->Features->Delete Features is the tool you would most likely want to use. I think ArcObjects is probably overkill for this application. Unless you're using VBA (which goes away at 10.1), you would have to either recompile every time the layers change, or implement some way to configure it at runtime. I don't normally advocate ModelBuilder but it is probably the best tool for this particular job. – blah238 Aug 10 '11 at 6:23
I got your idea and am trying to build the model now but the "check" part is really tricky. Also I have no idea how to integrate it to the map. Cuz actually I want to create a user friendly application, I mean users open the map, start an edit session, click on the object in A, press Delete button on the keyboard, that point and all surrounding object in B and C get deleted immediately, users save edit. – Nicholas Aug 10 '11 at 8:18
You can add a Calculate Value tool that returns a true/false based on the value returned by Get Count and use that as a precondition to the next tool to prevent it continuing if exactly 1 feature in A is not selected. I'm actually not sure how to check whether the user is in an edit session without ArcObjects -- that requirement may not be possible with either plain Python or ModelBuilder. And are you sure you really want to override what the Delete key does? Seems fraught with perils to me. – blah238 Aug 10 '11 at 17:04

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