User Profiles

User profiles help you to standardize the look and feel of your models and to support standards by grouping options and preferences together for sharing and reuse across your organization. Various user 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:
Note: An administrator can prepare customized preference profiles, which are made available to users on their first connection to the repository (see Controlling Defaults for Options and Preferences).

To view the list of user profiles, select Tools > Resources > User Profiles. For information about the tools available in resource file lists, see PowerDesigner Resource Files.

User profiles can contain any number of default preferences and options, the application of which is cumulative. Thus, if you:
  1. Apply a user profile that directs that table symbols in the physical data model are drawn by default in red, and that view symbols are drawn in blue (via display preferences)

  2. Apply a second user profile that directs that table symbols are drawn in green.

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.