Is there a way to export the .edmx diagram from VS2008 to Visio?

Question

Some people want to see the DB structure and dont have VS, is there a way to do this? Or any other way to export it outside of a screencapture (it is a huge diagram).

Thank you.

Cunha

Answer 1

You can right click on the design surface and select Diagram -> Export as Image and you get the entire edmx model generated as bmp

Danyelledanyette

The image export is okay, but it would still be extremely useful if I could export and .edmx to Visio or if Visio could import an .edmx file. – Lynettelynn

The problem of doing this is that the image obtained gets pixelated.Better using a pdf printer such as PDFCreator, and set paper size to ARCH E3 and export it to png. – Rawlings

Answer 2

This doesn't really work on large diagrams. Oh it exports it, but on a large diagram, once you zoom in, all text is nothing but pixels. It's a logged bug, but right now Microsoft is not planning on fixing this issue.

What I've done is downloaded a pdf printer (like Bullzip free edition), then just "print" the document to pdf.

To Viso, no. I have yet to find a way to export this to Visio.

Isocracy

Thanks for the PDF printing tip. Saved me about 3 hours. – Hawser

The problem with printing is that it 1. disregards manually-placed relationship lines, and 2. hides cardinality – Agnate

Answer 3

There is a PDF generation solution (suitable if you have large diagrams) :

You can do it from Visual Studio :

1. File > Print
2. Send it to OneNote or choose PDF.

Rasure

Very K.I.S.S. of you. :) – Imco