Turning Mermaid ER diagrams into shareable 3D schema tours

Turning Mermaid ER diagrams into shareable 3D schema tours Mermaid erDiagram is great for docs and PRs. It’s less great when the schema gets dense: boxes overlap, FK lines tangle, and “just zoom out” stops helping. I built Schema3D for that moment: open a Mermaid ER (or SQL / DrawDB) in the browser, explore it in 3D, and share a URL that recreates the view. No live database connection, no account. Why 3D helps (sometimes) 2D ERDs optimize for printing and README screenshots. Relationship-heavy schemas optimize for navigation: which tables hang off users, what’s optional vs required, where the junction tables sit. In Schema3D, you can orbit, switch layouts, search, and filter to walk a schema when the 2D version has become spaghetti. Try a sample, not a tutorial dump The app ships with sample schemas (including Mermaid). Open schema3d.com, pick one, and poke at the graph. Bring your own Mermaid or SQL when you want; the demos are there so you don’t have to. Share the view, not a screenshot Schema3D encodes the schema (and optional view state) into a compressed URL hash (similar in spirit to mermaid.live’s links). Send a colleague a link that opens the same graph without exporting PNG/PDF or granting DB credentials. Links Live: schema3d.com Source (MIT): github.com/shane-jacobeen/schema3d Read original: https://dev.to/shane11235/turning-mermaid-er-diagrams-into-shareable-3d-schema-tours-nn8