Operations work with methods to define the behavior of XFM features. Operations are single actions or a set of actions to be performed by a method. An operation is similar to a MicroStation command except that operations have a special finish notification that allows many operations to be sequenced together to perform feature placement.

An example of a single method that used multiple internal operations is the Tree feature from the Geo_Example project and the designer workspace. The "Place" method starts a cell placement operation, when that operation is finished an interactive scale operation is started. When the scale operation is finished a rotation operation is activated. Once the rotation is finished the initial "Place" method is restarted which in turn restarts the cell placement. As operations are activated they may show you Tool Settings or dialogs to collect input. The user interface items that are shown for an operation are defined in the OpenCities Geospatial Administrator.