By selecting the Reverse-engineer option and clicking the OK button, you are taken to the screen below:

You'll notice a few differences between ER/Studio and every other modeling tool.   All other tools require you to use an ODBC datasource.  ER/Studio gives you this option, but you can also make a native connetcion to MS SQL Server, Sybase, and Oracle databases.  The ODBC method also connects you directly to a database which means you would need to create multiple datasources for some DBMSes.

After logging into MS SQL Server 7.0, I had to use an ODBC datasource here, you will see the dialog box below.

Within this dialog, you get to specify the database you are going to reverse engineer.   Additionally, you can filter objects down by a particular owner.  There are four checkboxes that allow you to specify what type of objects you are going to bring over.  Finally, you can select only particular objects from the grid that is displayed.

Once you are finished selecting the tables and click OK, you will see the dialog box below displaying the progress of your operation.

When it is finished reverse engineering your database, you are left in the main workspace as shown in the image below.

There is a lot of information to get used to here.  To the left you will find a very handy explorer.  While you can't see it on this screen shot, there are three tabs within the explorer.  In the lower right hand corner you will see a zoom window.   Across the top is the toolbars to perform the operations you need within your model.  The drop down displayed here gives you the ability to switch the view of the objects that are displayed.  I normally work in datatype view which shows you the column name, datatype, nullability, primary keys, and foreign keys.    The Attribute view will only display the column names.  The entity view displays just the entities in your model.  The primary key view shows just the primary keys defined on a table.  This can be very handy when scanning a large model to determine if any entities do not have primary keys, because the entity box will be empty.  The All keys view will display primary and foreign keys.

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