October 29, 2010 at 10:08 am
Greetings all;
I have seen this issue/problem for a number of releases now and I have not been able to resolve it. I will admit I may be missing something here.
When I design a database I typically create subject area database diagrams. Something I've done for quite some time and is essential when designing complex data structures.
The problem that I have is printing the diagrams. I will spend a fair amount of time to insure I have my tables lined up and not overlapping the page. However when I go to print my entire ER diagram will shift causing tables to overlap pages. This is so annoying!
1) Has anyone else experience this?
2) Does anyone have a resolution for this?
3) Is there something that I'm doing wrong? or is this a known issue?
Thanks in advance.
Kurt
Kurt W. Zimmerman
SR DBA
Lefrak Organization
New York, NY
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwzimmerman
October 29, 2010 at 10:17 am
Did you set the database diagram to preview the page breaks so that you could see if they overlay page breaks? (Right-click on the back ground and click view page breaks)
You would probably be better off with a third-pary tool for the diagrams if this is very important to you.
October 29, 2010 at 10:38 am
Yes, in fact I tried everything. What I noticed is when I simply go to print the page breaks shift (or maybe the entities move to the to the center of the diagram.
Unfortunately budgets are tight to purchase a 3rd party tool like ERWin. Any open source solutions you can suggest?
Kurt
Kurt W. Zimmerman
SR DBA
Lefrak Organization
New York, NY
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwzimmerman
October 29, 2010 at 2:17 pm
October 29, 2010 at 4:03 pm
Set zoom to visible level (75%-100%).
Database Diagram menu, copy diagram to clipboard.
MSPaint - Paste - Print.
Perfect? No. But it works.
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October 30, 2010 at 6:02 am
You have to admit that is so lame.... FYI I've posted this bug on the Microsoft support website. Thanks for your suggestion.
Kurt
Kurt W. Zimmerman
SR DBA
Lefrak Organization
New York, NY
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwzimmerman
September 25, 2011 at 7:22 pm
I appreciate you submitting a bug to Microsoft on this issue. I hope you will post anything you find back to this forum as I too am suffering from this problem.
I have been having this problem for well over a year and it is beyond annoying. I am very diligent in how I put my database diagrams together, and I refer to them regularly throughout the software development process.
I've attached a BEFORE and AFTER jpg so that it is completely clear to anyone what is happening. In the BEFORE screen shot, you can see the entities all carefully placed within the page breaks. In the AFTER screen shot, all I have done is choose to PRINT the diagram. You can see the print dialog box open in this screen shot, and you can also see how ALL of the entities have mysteriously shifted down by about 1/2 a page.
I've tried to "outsmart" the shift, thinking OK, if it wants to shift 1/2 a page, I'll choose PRINT a 2nd time to see if it will shift again. Problem now is that it doesn't shift anymore. It stays "perfectly" misaligned.
September 25, 2011 at 8:21 pm
It's certainly not a fix but there IS a work around...
The "problem" is that the printed version treats all 6 pages as if it were a "single page" and tries to center the entire diagram on that "single page". The work around is to put one item close to the top of that "single page" and one item near the bottom. It doesn't even have to be anything significant... a sparsley filled text box with the date and the author's name (you DO do such things, don't you? ;-)) wil suffice.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
September 26, 2011 at 7:54 am
Are you going into File / Page Setup to set the correct paper size while you're using the diagram?
I've had my page breaks move when previewing them using my default "Letter" size & then selecting 11 x 17 in the printer preferences when actually printing.
My apologies if you're well past this point.
September 28, 2011 at 9:39 am
My work-around is,
Zoom to 100%
right-click on the diagram
select "Copy Diagram to Clipboard"
Paste into MS Word or similar
Print it from there.
If the diagram needs to span multiple pages I've also tried pasting into Excel so I can set the page breaks.
September 29, 2011 at 8:31 pm
Jeff,
Thank you for your post, it works perfectly. Now that I understand that it is trying to center the diagram I can control what it is doing. I moved some of the entities around on my diagram so that there was roughly the same whitespace in the top margin as in the bottom margin (in the bottom pages) and this took care of the problem. Going forward, I'll be able to follow this pattern and prevent this annoyance from cropping up in the future. Thank you very much for pointing this out!
I've attached a screen shot of the entities moved around so that things are aligned in such a way that printing doesn't mess up my diagram.
Thank you again.
Sincerely,
Grant
September 30, 2011 at 4:58 pm
You bet, Grant. Thank you for taking the time to post some feedback. 🙂
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
March 6, 2012 at 10:19 am
refer this and all your problems would be taken care of.
March 6, 2012 at 10:31 am
Thanks Ashraf for your post. I looked at it and while it is helpful in its suggestion to turn on the "view page breaks" feature of SQL Enterprise Mgr / SQL Management Studio Diagrams, it doesn't address what my problem was.
On page 1 of the thread is where I placed my original question.
To summarize, the problem wasn't with viewing the page breaks. I had this turned on just fine and had aligned my tables precisely within the page break boundaries. See this BEFORE screen capture to see how the diagram looked: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Attachment9866.aspx.
When attempting to PRINT this diagram though, all of the tables would shift so that they were no longer lined up the way I had placed them in the diagram. Here is what would happen as soon as I chose to PRINT the diagram: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Attachment9867.aspx
You will notice, in the AFTER screen shot that all of the entities in the diagram have shifted down about 1/2 of a page so that they are now crossing the page break boundaries.
Jeff Moden responded to my question shortly after posting to tell me to that I needed to place one of my entities closer to the bottom edge -- as SQL Management Studio was (un-helpfully) trying to center my diagram before printing. By moving some of the entities so that they were NEAR the top boundary AND NEAR the bottom page break boundry -- the diagram would then print properly.
March 6, 2012 at 10:41 am
This was my experience as well. I have battled with this printing issue for so long I have more or less given up on trying to print an ER diagram from SSMS. I've arranged my tables whilst showing the page breaks, but as previously stated, once you clicked "Print" all of your timely work was tossed out because SSMS thought it could do a better job.
Kurt Zimmerman
Kurt W. Zimmerman
SR DBA
Lefrak Organization
New York, NY
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwzimmerman
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