The canvas is where your schema lives visually. It is the main working surface of this desktop ERD tool: entities are boxes, relationships are connectors, and you arrange them to tell the story of your data model.

Entities and relationships

  • Add an entity from the control bar (Schemity calls a table an “entity”), then name it.
  • Move an entity by dragging it. Connected relationships follow automatically.
  • Draw a relationship by connecting two entities; Schemity renders it in crow’s foot notation. See Relationships.
  • Pan by dragging empty canvas space; the view auto-scrolls when you drag an entity toward an edge.
  • Auto Layout arranges entities hierarchically, and Alphabet Layout orders them alphabetically - both are a good starting point you can then adjust by hand.
  • Alignment guides snap entities into line and equal spacing as you drag, so the diagram stays neat.

When a single canvas gets crowded, do not fight it - create Context Views so each view shows only the entities that matter.

Legends

Add a legend - a colored, named box - to group or annotate a region of the canvas. Legends are a presentation aid; see Legends & Annotations.

Tabs

You can keep several diagrams open at once, each in its own tab in the control bar. A tab marked with * has unsaved changes. See Tabs & Navigation for switching between them and the keyboard shortcuts.

Exporting

Export the current diagram from the export menu as a PNG, JPEG, or SVG image, or as a SQL file of CREATE statements. SVG keeps text selectable and scales infinitely. See Export SQL / Generate DDL.

It all saves to JSON

Every change on the canvas - positions included - is written to the connection’s JSON file. That is what makes Schemity an ERD single source of truth: the picture and the structure are one versioned file.

Next

Edit the contents of an entity in Entities & Fields.