Is Visio the only way here??
I saw another stackoverflow question about this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30474/database-schema-diagram-design-tool
And whilst Sql Designer is nice I dont want to draw all the tables by hand - Is there any way to short circut this and upload SQL DDL and it generates the tables in a diagram??
MS Visio has a function to generate a database diagram from an existing database. For Vision 2008 go to Tools->Add-Ons->Visio Extras->Database Wizard. I used it a few years ago, but have no sql server at hand to test it right now.
EDIT: Just saw that you specifically asked for SQL Designer. Have a look at the manual.
Basics
The application allows you to:
...
- Import DB schemas
MS SQL Server has built - in Data Schema diagramming tool (in the SQL Server Management Studio). Just right click on the database diagrams node in the tree under the database you want to create a schema from... Once you have an empty diagram object, you can even create actual database tables directly on the diagram