Parent-child form display results

[lachesis]

I have a multi-functional form that adds, updates & reviews existing records. I am trying to work out if this approach is going to work given the complexity of the underlying tables.

tblCategory:
CatCode (PK)
CatName

tblFeature:
CatCode (FK)
FeCode
FeID
FeName

In tblFeature CatCode+FeCode+FeID make up the Primary Key.

In Review mode, I filter records from tblFeature on CatCode from tblCategory to get all Features for the Category eg. Category Code 1 has 6 Features, Category 5 has 14 features, category 48 has 3 features, and so on.

A user must first add a new Category, before the filter on Features will operate. If there are no Features for the chosen Category, the last record in tblFeature displays.

Now if I want to create a new record in tblFeature I need to determine the Category from tblCategory first and allow the addition of a new Feature. It all seems a little long-winded to get to where I want to be.

Has anyone developed multi-purpose, cross-table forms like this? Because I'm sure there's an easier way...

thanks