EF Tip: Show in Designer

If you’ve ever opened the Visual Studio Entity Designer and spent more than a few seconds searching for a specific entity, you’ll quickly wonder if there must be a better way to do this.  Fortunately there is, through the Model Browser.  Finding the specific entity is only a few clicks away:

1. Open the Model browser.  You can select View > Other Windows > Model Browser:

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2. When you see the Model Browser window, open the Conceptual Entity Model, which often has the “Model” suffix if you created the model with the default naming scheme.  In this example, I’m using the Northwind database, which is named NORTHWINDModel. Then open the Entity Types branch and you’ll see something like this:

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3. To find the Customer entity, right-click on the Customer entity in the Model Browser and select Show in Designer, like this:

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4. The designer automatically centers on your entity.

Published by Joe Mayo

Author and independent software consultant. Specializing in Microsoft .NET technology. #ai #botframework #chatbots

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