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.

score 47 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 17 '09 at 07:46

47

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

answered Jan 17 '09 at 07:46

Justin King

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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. – goodman Aug 20 '10 at 14:10
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. – Willy May 29 '20 at 14:32

score 35 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 01 '11 at 18:02

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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.

answered Aug 01 '11 at 18:02

Chris Smith

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Thanks for the PDF printing tip. Saved me about 3 hours. – Techgration Dec 18 '13 at 17:36
The problem with printing is that it 1. disregards manually-placed relationship lines, and 2. hides cardinality – Brian May 16 '18 at 19:29

hdoghmen · Answer 3 · 2015-12-03T14:38:42.030

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

You can do it from Visual Studio :

File > Print
Send it to OneNote or choose PDF.

edited Dec 03 '15 at 14:38

answered Jan 19 '15 at 22:29

hdoghmen

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Very K.I.S.S. of you. :) – fischgeek Aug 19 '19 at 14:19

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

3 Answers3