User profiles help you to standardize the look and feel of your models and to support standards. Profiles allow you to group options and preferences together for sharing and reuse across your organization. Various profiles are provided with PowerDesigner, and you can create your own.
The various kinds of PowerDesigner options and preferences are stored in your model files and/or in your Windows registry. User profiles can contain default values for:
Display Preferences – [model or registry] to control the color, shape, size, etc. of your diagram symbols and the information that is displayed upon them
Model Options – [model only] to control naming conventions, case sensitivity, notation, default values, etc.
General Options – [registry only] to control dialog preferences, environment variables, fonts, etc.
Check Model options – [model only] to control which checks are applied, and which are errors, warnings, etc.
Other options – [registry only] such as the layout of toolbars and windows, favorite pages, default columns for grids, etc.
User profiles can contain any number of default preferences and options, the application of which is cumulative. Thus, if you:
The result will be that table symbols are drawn in green, and view symbols are drawn in blue. You can, of course, override these default preferences and options locally in the model.
User profiles are PowerDesigner resource files, and so can be opened and edited in the resource editor, but in general you will create and edit them by extracting preferences defined in a model, or from your registry.