Use Adobe Xd to create your own Tabular Model Diagram View in a few easy steps
Downloadable Adobe Xd file available at end of this article.
As a data an analytics consultant I’ve become more and more enthusiastic about Adobe Xd as an easy to use design tool. It is my go to tool for making background images for my Power BI reports and it helps me to create solution architecture images that represent the specific details of my clients architecture.
Can you share the Diagram View of the Azure Analyses Services Tabular Model you’ve created?
Recently I worked for a Business Intelligence unit that gives its Power BI users access to their data using an Azure Analyses Services (AAS) Tabular Model with a live connection. This set up offers lots of benefits, but restricts end users from seeing the diagram view of the Tabular Model. Especially in larger models this causes difficulties in selecting the right dimensions for the measures they choose to slice. However, there is no easy way to export the diagram view from your Visual Studio solution.
A Diagram View that is easy to change and share
What we needed was a representation of the AAS Tabular Model that was easy to edit. A team member will maintain the diagram view before every release. Also it needed to be easy export the diagram view to png and pdf formats to share it with our end users.
By being in control of the design of our Diagram View we can also highlight the changes we made in the the current release or add extra information about our attributes or relationships and how and why we modeled the data in a specific way.
A tutorial for making your own Diagram View
Inspired by the tutorial Adobe Xd provides you when you first start their application, I created a tutorial for creating your own Tabular Model Diagram View in a few easy steps. By providing a few ready made building blocks for tables and relationships and the instructions how to change them, you too will be able to make a representation of your own Tabular Model in no time.
1. Download Adobe Xd for free here and try it out yourself:
https://www.adobe.com/africa/products/xd.html
