Power BI Default Semantic Model or Custom A guide for using in Fabric Environment

The Lakehouse or Warehouse comes with a default Power BI Sematic model, which can be used for reporting and analytics. However, you can also build and use a customized semantic model. There are significant differences when using the semantic model in real-world analytics projects. In this article, I'll explain the difference between these two, which one is recommended, and why.
Learn more using the links in my blog article:
radacad.com/po...

[@FernandoGarcia-cu8by]

Amazing video, but one important thing, when develop your dashboard using power bi desktop and connect to your semantic model, will use automatically import mode(Analysis Services), if you want to use direct lake mode, you have to develop your dashboard straight from fabric!!

[@RADACAD]

At the moment the ability to create and edit with Direct Lake models is not possible using Power BI Desktop, only in the service. However, the functionality will be available in Desktop too, soon hopefully.

[@topcataj]

Really helpful video! We've been trying to work out how we should setup/organise semantic models from Warehouses and have struggled understanding the different options and their pros/cons so this is exactly what we needed. My understanding was that if you used views in a warehouse you would fall back to directquery instead of directlake, does that only relate to connecting to the default semantic model? If you have a view in a custom semantic model you'll still have a directlake connection?

[@RADACAD]

Glad it was helpful!
That is true, with SQL views you will have fallback to DirectQuery

[@Schnappy21]

Great video! Very helpfull, thanks.

[@RADACAD]

You're welcome!

[@Jojms123]

Thanks for the video, although my "create new table" is greyed out :/

[@RADACAD]

that is right, you cannot create calculated table or columns using Direct Lake mode, you have to build an Import model for those. The best practice, however is to create the calculated table or columns in your Lakehouse or Warehouse and feed data into it using Dataflow and Data Pipelines, and then use that table in your semantic model.

[@ravsha85]

Many thanks for the Video and explanation, I just have one question if there are any column name changes or table name changes made in the custom model then how the refresh from default to custom model would recognize the change...I came across a scenario where it errored out showing as column name differs

[@RADACAD]

you don't need to refresh. in the model editor for the custom semantic model, there is a button for EDIT TABLES, there you can add tables if new one added.

[@Milhouse77BS]

Thanks. Very helpful. All the options can be confusing.

[@RADACAD]

You're welcome! 😊

[@andresmaldonado2629]

thanks, very clear and to the point..

[@RADACAD]

Glad you liked it

[@nazimscr]

Many thanks, excellent video and very useful

[@RADACAD]

Glad you enjoyed it!