Creating a Model

You create a new model by selecting File > New Model.

Note: A project can provide a convenient environment for working with multiple interconnected models and other files. For detailed information about working with projects, see Projects and Framework Matrices.

Note: For information about creating new models in the PowerDesigner Eclipse and Visual Studio plugins, see Creating a Model in Eclipse and Creating a Model in Visual Studio.

The New Model dialog is highly configurable, and your administrator may have hidden options that are not relevant for your work or provided templates or predefined models to guide you through model creation. When you open the dialog, one or more of the following buttons will be available on the left hand side:

Categories - which provides a set of predefined models and diagrams sorted in a configurable category structure.
Model types - which provides the classic list of PowerDesigner model types and diagrams.
Template files - which provides a set of model templates sorted by model type.

Select File > New Model to open the New Model dialog.

Click a button, and then select a category or model type ( as appropriate ) in the left-hand pane.

The following table lists the PowerDesigner model types:

Model definition	File ext	Backup ext
Requirements Model. A requirements model (RQM) helps you analyze any kind of written requirements and link them with users and groups who will implement them and with design objects in other models. You can use an RQM to represent any structured document (e.g. functional specification, test plan, business goals, etc.) and import and export hierarchies of requirements as MS Word documents.	.rqm	.rqb
Enterprise Architecture Model. An enterprise architecture model (EAM) helps you analyze and document your organization and its business functions, along with the applications and systems that support them and the physical architecture on which they are implemented.	.eam	.eab
Business Process Model. A business process model (BPM) helps you identify, describe, and decompose business processes. You can analyze your system at various levels of detail, and focus alternatively on control flow (the sequence of execution) or data flow (the exchange of data). You can use BPEL, BPMN, and many other process languages.	.bpm	.bpb
Conceptual Data Model. A conceptual data model (CDM) helps you analyze the conceptual structure of an information system, to identify the principal entities to be represented, their attributes, and the relationships between them. A CDM is more abstract than a logical (LDM) or physical (PDM) data model.	.cdm	.cdb
Logical Data Model. A logical data model (LDM) helps you analyze the structure of an information system, independent of any specific physical database implementation. An LDM has migrated entity identifiers and is less abstract than a conceptual data model (CDM), but does not allow you to model views, indexes and other elements that are available in the more concrete physical data model (PDM).	.ldm	.ldb
Physical Data Model. A physical data model (PDM) helps you to analyze the tables, views, and other objects in a database, including multidimensional objects necessary for data warehousing. A PDM is more concrete than a conceptual (CDM) or logical (LDM) data model. You can model, reverse-engineer, and generate for all the most popular DBMSs.	.pdm	.pdb
Information Liquidity Model. An information liquidity model (ILM) provides a global view of the movement of information in your organization. You can analyze and document where your data originates, where it moves to, and how it is transformed on the way, including replications and ETL.	.ilm	.ilb
Object Oriented Model. An object-oriented model (OOM) helps you analyze an information system through use cases, structural and behavioral analyses, and in terms of deployment, using the Unified Modeling Language (UML). You can model, reverse-engineer, and generate for Java, .NET and other languages.	.oom	.oob
XML Model. An XML model (XSM) helps you analyze an XML Schema Definition (.XSD), Document Type Definition (.DTD) or XML-Data Reduced (.XDR) file. You can model, reverse-engineer, and generate each of these file formats.	.xsm	.xsb
Free Model. A free model (FEM) provides a context-free environment for modeling any kind of objects or systems. It is generally associated with a set of extensions, which allow you to define your own concepts and graphical symbols.	.fem	.feb
Multi-Model Report. A multimodel report (MMR) is a PowerDesigner report that can document any number of models together and show the links between them. To create such a report, you must have at least one model open in the workspace, and you can add additional models at any time.	.mmr	.bmr

Select an item in the right-hand pane. Depending on how your New Model dialog is configured, these items may be first diagrams or templates on which to base the creation of your model. Use the Views tool on the upper right hand side of the dialog to control the display of the items.
Enter a model name. The code of the model, which is used for script or code generation, is derived from this name according to the model naming conventions.
[when available] Select a resource file , and specify whether to:
- Share the resource file definition – creates a link to the file in the Resource Files\ directory. Changes made to the target affect all models that share it.
- Copy the resource file definition in model – makes a copy of the resource file and saves it with the model. Changes made to the target affect only the current model.
For more information about PowerDesigner resource files, and how to add extensions to them, see the Customizing and Extending PowerDesigner manual.
[optional] Click the Select Extensions button and attach one or more extensions to your model.
Click OK to create and open the model .
Note: Sample models are available in the Example Directory.

Note: For information about attaching XEMs to your model, see Attaching Extensions. For information about the diagrams that are available in these model types, see PowerDesigner Models and Diagrams.