SSMS crashes when attempting to create a database diagram

Question

I'm currently using the latest version of SSMS (17.8.1) on windows 10 and everytime I try to create a database diagram it crashes without giving me any error message. I've already tried to re-install SSMS but the problem still occurs.

Answer 1

I've found that the database diagram tool seems to crash if you modify things outside of the diagram.

Diagrams appear to remain stable if:

• The database diagram tool is used to do all of your modifications, thus retaining all metadata of the process within the diagram.
• Your database structure is modified outside of the diagram which is then deleted and recreated each time.
• The entire database is built, ground up, to a point that you are satisfied and feel that it won't change. The database should then be diagrammed post-beta.

Whichever method is used, this is a known issue.

To confirm, I have this issue while using SSMS 18.4 against a SQL 2016 Express instance.

Answer 2

Luckily, database diagrams won't be available in future versions of SSMS starting from 18.0, as it's a deprecated feature. Source