Printing a large Gen Data Model Entity Relationship Diagram
search cancel

Printing a large Gen Data Model Entity Relationship Diagram

book

Article ID: 138249

calendar_today

Updated On:

Products

Gen Gen - Workstation Toolset

Issue/Introduction

Have been asked to produce an entity relationship diagram for each of our component models and have not used the Data Model Diagram for some time.
Entities are created using the Data Model Browser, subsequently the diagrams are basically empty.

Is there a solution to automatically generate an Entity Relationship (ER) Diagram for printing?

Environment

Release: 8.6
Gen Workstation

Resolution

Initial advice:

1. In the Data Model Diagram:

Use Ctrl+I and Ctrl+U for easy zoom in and zoom out

  • In Root Subject Area to get a clean Data Model display zoom out and unplace each of the existing placed subject areas by using right mouse button on each one and use View -> Unplace.
  • Then right mouse button on Root Subject Area use View -> Place Unplaced Box and select required Subject Area. 
  • Repeat above for any Subject Areas lower in the hierarchy
  • On final Subject Area use right mouse button and use View -> Expand to see all entities and relationships

Set Printer Setup to print to a pdf and tested some prints of just Screen or Entire Diagram to single or multiple pages

In the resulting pdf you need to zoom in to read but if printing to A3 I think you could select to fit.

 

2. User had follow-on observations:

===

a. The ERD diagram is mostly on the top left corner of the page.

b. Some relationship descriptors are not printed or cut short (zooming doesn't resolve this).

c. Some relationships are not printed at all.

Examples:

Self referencing relations are not labeled.

Some relationships are  not labeled.

On the left side of the diagram entities are stacked on top of each other, and not displaying correctly relationships between then.

===

Further advice:

If  double click on the relationship properties there is an option "Display relationship name" which when enabled should fix the problem with the visibility of the relationship names between entities in the Data Model Diagram. However enabling "Display relationship name" does not resolve the problem with the involuted/self referencing relationship visibility (Sustaining Engineering are investigating further as a Defect)

Zooming in on the data Model Diagram before printing does help with ERD compression into top left corner. The printed relationship names also seem to be truncated or not according to zoom level in the Data Model Diagram so zooming in and printing the Entire Diagram as a Multiple Pages document appears to be the only way to get them fully displayed. However to get all relationship names fully displayed requires zooming in to a high level resulting in a large number of pages, where only some pages contain useful content.

Additional Information