Can Community transfer logical to phisical ERD?

Hello!

I can’t transfer logical ERD to phisical ERD in VP Community Edition because there is not such menu option as “Utilities > Transit to Physical ERD” (how this article discribe to do https://www.visual-paradigm.com/tutorials/compare-logical-physical-erd.jsp )

here is screenshot of my workspace
http://joxi.ru/eAOB4MdC4jaoa2

Is it a limitation of Community version?
It is strange because your “Visual Paradigm Editions Comparison” say that Community have not onle "Database View editor"
https://www.visual-paradigm.com/support/edition-comparison.jsp

That’s correct. If you check that link you’ll notice a comment on top which mentions the compatible editions: Enterprise, Professional, Standard and Modeler. So no community support there, sorry :wink:

However, you also discovered an interesting error because I just noticed that even though that article mentions the Modeler edition this feature isn’t supported there either. Seems like this manual needs an update.

Yeah, that comparison is a little confusing. It’s in the details: the community version does support Logical, Conceptual and Physical designs (follow the link to read the explanation) but that feature doesn’t include the conversion process.

So, sorry to disappoint, but this feature isn’t supported for the community nor the modeling editions. To be honest I think this comparison page is much better. There you’ll more clearly see that although ERD is supported, the advanced modeling toolset isn’t.

Fortunately Visual Paradigm (usually) provides more than one way to get things done,and this is no different…

Transforming your ERD concept into an ERD design

So I made a simple ERD concept diagram:

Concept

I did make sure to add the right data, such as field types, but as the name implies this is all a mere concept. So now I’m ready to turn this into a physical design. Couldn’t be easier, even with Community / Modeler editions.

  • Make a new ERD diagram, set it to physical.
  • Add a new Entity.
  • Instead of giving it a name press control-space and select an existing entity by selecting it and pressing enter.

So something like this:

And the end result is that you’ll get an instant physical model of your concept:

People_physical

It gets better: add another entity (“Places” in my example) and it will automatically re-create the existing relationship(s) between the entity/entities. Of course you don’t have to use that, if you don’t want to then you can just remove it again.

Oh… if you’re going to do this then don’t mind the sudden “a” showing up, nor the ‘M’ on your previous diagram (use control-tab to switch between the two). Those are merely indicators which tell you that you’re re-using model elements.

Also see this thread:

Hope this helps!

ShelLuser, thank you for your explanations.

Modeler edition this feature isn’t supported there either. Seems like this manual needs an update

IMHO, it will be better to turn on this function in Modeler.


This interesting trick (do Physical from Logical with Ctrl+Space) is not working :frowning:
I mean it is good to clone an entity and it let you have one master and many virtual copies
But it don’t let me to transfer ERD. I do the following steps:

  1. create logical ERD and some logical entity
  2. create physical ERD
  3. create entity in physical ERD with pressing “control-space” and selecting the existing logacal entity
  4. and this new entity has a logical type!
  5. and if I change this type to physical - then the logical entity in logical ERD become a physical one!

http://joxi.ru/zANJ54WClzKYWA

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Hi,

Control-space and select existing entity is same as “Copy” + “Paste View”.
If you want to make a copy of entity, you can “Copy” from logical ERD and “Paste Model Element” in Physical ERD.

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So I got myself a community license today. Yeah, the guy with access to both Modeler and Professional editions needed even more :wink:

More seriously though; I can easily transform from Conceptual / Logical to Physical using the method described above, but there’s definitely something weird going on:

So what you’re seeing here:

  • I made a default ERD diagram (with the default name), set it to conceptual and added an entity.
  • I then made a second diagram (“test”) which I set to physical, then I used the above technique with control-space and I ended up with a physical entity (as you can see in the blue areas; those are so called diagram overviews, they show the contents of another diagram).
  • Finally I created a new model, another (physical) ERD diagram and used “paste model element”, the result of that can be seen above. Now I suddenly got a logical entity in a physical setting.

After this I created 2 more entities, using both control-space and “paste model element” and that did get me the expected results (physical model).

It’s too early (literally) to draw conclusions for me right now, but I’ll do some more research later this weekend. Even though I prefer my licensed editions I have to say that Community isn’t bad at all.