A chart is built from the family tree, and the tree decides where everything in it goes. Drawing objects are how you add the things the tree has no place for — a picture, a line, a piece of text. There are two kinds, and which you want depends on whether the thing belongs to a person or not.
The quickest way to make one is to draw it. A small palette sits at the top-left of the chart while you are editing, with a tool for each kind: Text, Rectangle, Ellipse, Line, Image, and for a shape of your own the Polygon and Curve tools, with a button beside them offering the common shapes ready-made. Pick a tool and drag on the sheet, and the object is made where the drag was, at the size the drag described; a plain click places one at its ordinary size instead, and Escape puts an armed tool away. A new text object opens straight into editing, ready for its words. Choosing Image asks for the file first, since a picture cannot exist without one — cancelling creates nothing. The two shape tools work differently and are described under Shapes below. The Select tool at the top of the palette selects several objects at once.
Objects can also be added from the Objects section on the Style tab of the Chart Properties panel, and from the right-click menu on the sheet. The panel lists what is on the page as a tree, with the members of a group beneath it; the buttons in its header add and delete, and the properties of the selected object appear in the grid beneath. Clicking a row selects that object on the chart, which is also the easy way to reach something hidden behind something else.
An object hangs from a compass point of the page — a corner, the middle of an edge, or the centre — with X and Y offsets measured inward from it in millimetres. A positive number always means further in, whichever point you hung it from, so you never have to work out which corners want a minus sign.
That is why the anchor matters: a photograph set 10mm inside the top-right corner is still 10mm inside that corner after you change the paper size or turn the page on its side. Anchor something near the tree to the centre and it keeps its place relative to the middle of the sheet instead.
A line hangs by one of its ends — the end the dashed guide runs from when it is selected — and the rest of the line follows it wherever the anchor and offsets put it.
Pick the anchor from the Anchor row, or from the right-click menu on the object itself. Choosing a new anchor puts the object at that anchor, ready to adjust, rather than carrying your old offsets over to it.
The title, the key and the "last updated" label are placed the same way, as described in Positioning the title, key and labels.
Click an object on the chart to select it. Click again in the same place to reach whatever is underneath it, people included; a click on bare paper puts the selection down. A shape is selected by its outline rather than by the box round it, so a click inside a bracket or through the hole in a ring goes to whatever is behind.
A small toolbar appears beside whatever is selected, carrying the things you change while arranging it — for a drawing object its pen and fill colours, pen width, a rectangle’s corner radius, alignment, anchor and front-to-back order, depending on the kind. Its menus tick the setting in use, so it also answers what the object is set to. The exact millimetres stay in the panel.
Drag an object to move it — selected or not; a drag picks it up and selects it on the way. Hold Shift to keep the movement to one direction. The dashed line shows which point of the page the object is anchored to; dragging never changes that, only how far in the object sits.
Drag a handle to resize it. A selected object shows handles on its outline. An image keeps its proportions, and so does a shape whose proportions are part of what it is — a star, a hexagon, a shield, or one you drew yourself: these have corner handles only, and every one of them scales the whole thing. To stretch one out of shape, untick Fixed aspect ratio in the Objects panel, or press Keep proportions on its toolbar, and it gets the edge handles too. The common shapes that are themselves at any proportions — a triangle, an arrow, a brace — arrive free, and the same button locks them. Rectangles and ellipses resize freely from any handle — hold Shift on a corner to keep their proportions too — and a text object offers its sides, since its height comes from the words.
A picture can be turned over and coloured. Flip horizontally and Flip vertically on its toolbar mirror it in its box, and Fill colour and Pen colour colour it — one of the chart’s own colours, or one you choose. This works on vector artwork, including the library’s dividers, which are drawn to take the chart’s colours. A photograph keeps its own colours and cannot be turned, so on one these buttons are greyed.
A colour can be faded. Under each colour in the Objects panel is a transparency, a percentage where 0 is solid, so a tinted rectangle can sit behind part of the tree as a wash without hiding it. The fill and the pen fade separately, which lets a soft panel keep a crisp edge. On an image it reaches the same artwork the colours do; a photograph is left alone, and its rows are greyed with the colours.
A line has a handle at each end. Drag one and the other end stays put. The line gently settles on whole degrees, so a truly horizontal or vertical line is easy to hit by eye; hold Shift to place the end completely freely.
Press Escape in the middle of a drag and the object goes back exactly where it was. Nothing is saved until you let go of the button. Once you have, Ctrl+Z — or the Undo button at the foot of the palette — takes the chart back a step, for the last twenty or so changes made on the chart itself. Changing the chart from the panel, or opening a different chart, starts the history afresh.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Left Right Up Down | Move a millimetre at a time |
| Shift+ arrows | Make wider, narrower, taller, shorter |
| + / - | Scale the whole object |
| Delete | Remove the object |
Right-click gives the stacking order — Bring to front, Send to back and the two single steps between — along with the anchor, Duplicate, which makes a copy a few millimetres off the original, and delete.
Objects are drawn behind the tree. An object that overlaps the chart will not cover it — the names, dates and lines are drawn over the top — so nothing you place can make the tree harder to read.
Hold Shift and click to add an object to the selection, or to take one out of it again. The Select tool at the top of the palette does the same in one gesture: drag a band and everything wholly inside it is selected, click and the one thing under the pointer is; the tool then puts itself away. A set is outlined as one and moves as one, whether dragged or nudged with the arrow keys, and its toolbar offers what applies to a set: Group, Combine, Align, Duplicate and Delete.
Align lines the set up — left edges, centres, right edges, tops, middles or bottoms — against the set’s own extent, so the outermost object stays where it is and the rest come to it. With three or more selected it also offers Space evenly, across or down, which keeps the two outermost where they are and makes the gaps between the rest equal. With one object selected the same button reads Align to page and places it against the page instead: centred, or flush with an edge. This is how to get things exactly symmetrical, there being no way to type "in the middle".
A shape is an outline made of points, and it is how you draw the things the fixed outlines cannot: a triangle, an arrow, a bracket round three siblings, a rough ring round a branch. If you have used a drawing program the tools will be familiar.
Polygon draws straight sides. Click where each corner goes. Curve is the pen tool: a click places a corner, and a click held and dragged pulls out a curve, the side behind bending as you pull. Either way, while you draw:
| Shift | Hold the next side to the horizontal, the vertical or forty-five degrees |
| Ctrl | Draw off the level: the pointer normally snaps level with a point already placed, a dotted guide showing which, so the third side of a rectangle comes out the length of the first |
| Click the first point | Finish, closed |
| Enter or double-click | Finish, open |
| Backspace | Take the last point back |
| Escape | Abandon the drawing |
Whether the outline is closed is a setting on the finished shape — the Closed outline button on its toolbar, or the row in the Objects panel — so it can be changed as often as you like afterwards.
The button beside the two tools offers the common shapes: triangle, right-angled triangle, diamond, chevron, block arrow, star, hexagon, brace, speech balloon and shield. Choose one and drag out the box it should fill. Once placed it is an ordinary shape and can be reshaped like any other.
Rotate or flip, on the shape’s toolbar, turns it by a quarter, an eighth or a half turn, or mirrors it side to side or top to bottom. An arrow that points left is the arrow that points right, turned.
Double-click a shape to edit its points; Escape finishes. Each point shows a handle — square for a corner, round for a smooth point — and a hollow ring sits halfway along each side. Drag a point to move it; drag a ring and it becomes a new point. Double-click a point to change it between corner and smooth. The current point shows its two curve handles, which you drag to shape the curve through it. Normally the two move together, keeping the curve smooth; hold Alt as you start to drag one and it moves alone, so the two curves meet at a sharp point — the foot of a shield, the top of a heart. Once pulled apart, the handles stay independent; Smooth on the point’s menu brings them back into line. The keyboard works on the current point:
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Tab / Shift+Tab | Step to the next or previous point — the way to reach one lying under another |
| Left Right Up Down | Move it a millimetre at a time |
| Delete | Remove it |
Right-click a point for Corner, Smooth, Add point after and Delete point.
Select two or more shapes and Combine makes them one shape, with one fill and one pen. An outline that lies inside another becomes a hole, so a ring drawn round a person leaves them visible through it. Break apart, on a combined shape’s toolbar, separates it into its outlines again; to take just one outline out, right-click one of its points while editing and choose Break out this outline, or Delete this outline to remove it. Taking a hole out fills it in, since it was a hole only for being inside the other.
Combining settles the result on one anchor, that of the first shape you selected — the dashed tether on a multiple selection shows which, so select in a different order if you want another.
Group, on the toolbar of a multiple selection, keeps several objects of any kind together — a shield, two stars and a motto, each with its own colours — so they move, resize, duplicate and delete as one. Resizing a group scales everything in it except the words of a text object, which keep their size. As with Combine, the group takes the anchor of the first object selected, so it stays together when the paper size changes.
Click any member and the group is selected. Double-click a member to work on it inside the group, where it has its own toolbar and grips and the group is drawn lightly round it; Escape, or a click elsewhere, comes back out. Ungroup is on the group’s toolbar and Remove from group on a member’s. A group cannot contain another group: grouping a group with something else simply adds to it, and a group left with one member dissolves.
In the Objects panel a group is a row with its members beneath it. Double-click the row, or press F2, to give the group a name. Deleting a group deletes everything in it.
A text object takes any of the chart’s own text styles, or a font of its own, along with a colour and left, centred, right or justified alignment.
Double-click a text object to edit its words right on the sheet: type, then click anywhere else when you are done, or press Escape to leave the words as they were.
Its width is normally worked out from the text: it wraps only where you have pressed Enter. Untick Auto width to set a width yourself, and the text then wraps to fit it. The width shown while Auto width is ticked is the width the text is actually using, so unticking it starts you from what is already on the chart.
A person carries one picture. The quickest way to add it is to right-click the person on the chart and choose Add picture, which asks for the placement and then the file. The Picture section on the Person tab of the Chart Properties panel does the same with its + button, and is where the measurements are.
A picture is placed one of five ways:
| Placement | What it does |
|---|---|
| Left of text | Claims a strip inside the entry, to the left of the name. The entry widens to make room; the text keeps the space it had. |
| Right of text | The same, on the right. |
| Behind entry | Fitted behind the whole entry, claiming no room at all. Every line and word is drawn over it. |
| Above text | Sits over the name and pushes the text down. Takes the width of the text. |
| Below text | Tucks in under the dates. Takes the width of the text. |
Which of them you use is a matter of taste. A photograph sits as happily above or below the text as beside it; the practical difference is that a picture beside the text makes the entry wider, while one above or below makes it taller. Choose whichever suits the shape of the chart you are building.
A picture beside the text also moves the text off the middle of the entry, and the line coming down to that person meets the text. On a chart with many pictures that can leave it unclear whose portrait is whose, since a picture can sit as close to the next person as to its own. Tick Centre pips with pictures on the Layout tab and the line meets the middle of the whole entry instead, picture included. A family positioned above a particular child follows whichever you choose.
Behind entry is the exception, in that it takes no room at all and the entry is drawn over it — which makes it the one to reach for when you want a wash or a faint device behind a name rather than a picture alongside it.
Width and Height are in millimetres. Padding is the gap kept between the picture and the text for the placements that have one.
On the chart a picture is part of its person: clicking it selects the person, not the picture, and right-clicking either the person or the picture opens the same menu, where Picture changes the placement or removes it. While its person is the current person the picture shows resize handles — drag one and the picture resizes, with the entry and the chart re-arranging around it as you drag. A picture keeps its shape (corner handles only) unless you untick Fixed aspect ratio. Press Escape mid-drag to put it back exactly.
Someone can appear on a chart more than once — cousins who married each other are the usual reason. A picture is drawn on only one of those appearances: the one drawn at its full width, rather than the narrower one carrying the arrow that points across to it. You attach the picture to the person in the ordinary way and the chart works out where it belongs.
JPG, PNG and SVG can all be used. An SVG stays sharp at any size, on screen, in a PDF and in print, which makes it the better choice for a crest or a device.
A picture is given a sensible size the moment you choose the file, so it arrives as something you can see and take hold of rather than filling the sheet. Leave Fixed aspect ratio ticked and changing either measurement adjusts the other to match, so the picture keeps its shape; untick it to stretch the picture deliberately.
If the file lives anywhere inside your project folder, only the path from there down is remembered, so the chart still finds its pictures after the project is moved to another machine. A file kept outside the project is remembered by its full path.
SVG support is deliberately limited. The route exists for artwork — a crest, a badge, a device — and not for things the program already does properly itself.
The main things that are not brought in:
The first two are less a limitation than a division of labour: words and photographs belong to the chart, which handles both properly, so the SVG is left to do the one thing it is better at than anything else — the drawing.
Everything else is the ordinary vocabulary of a drawing, and that is what the route is built for: paths, circles, ellipses, rectangles, polygons and lines; colours, line weights, caps and joins; transparency; and layers and groups, including the colours a group sets for everything inside it. Shapes that have been moved, scaled, rotated, or slanted arrive where the drawing program puts them. A layer you have hidden stays hidden.
If a file does not come in as you expect, open it in your drawing program and do these four things before saving it again:
That is the same preparation a cutting machine or an embroidery program asks for, and a file prepared that way will come in whole.