Family Historian User Group

I’ve been trying to produce an all relatives diagram consisting of 300 individuals arranged to use the minimum area (& paper). The movement control on the all relatives diagram seems to restrict certain moves. Moving individuals or branches up and down seems ok, but there is limited left / right movement.
In order to have complete control of box/branch position, I decided to create a multiple tree diagram using the same individuals as the all relatives, but with several ancestor/ descendant trees carefully positioned to produce a seamless diagram.
I realised that having the “Avoid page boundaries” feature enabled would make this exercise very difficult, and so decided to switch it off and manually stretch the connecting lines where they cross the page boundaries.
I have spent a week of evenings on this, and have achieved the desired effect with them fitting onto 4x A3 pages.
However, I have an annoying issue. Having carefully positioned the all the trees in the diagram and saved for later, I find that when I open the diagram next time, the trees have shifted slightly and don’t line up. Has anyone else had this problem? And is there a way of preventing it?
It doesn’t seem right to me, possibly a bug. Would be nice if it were fixed!!

As a result of this, I have two requests:
1. More flexibility in the movement of boxes/branches on the all relatives diagram, particularly left and right.
2. To fix the problem of trees on a multiple tree diagram being shifted between saving and opening.

Tim


ID:2271

Tim

To move branches left or right, you usually click-and-drag on the childbar (or equivalent parent bar) when 'Box and Bar' drags are enabled. Have you tried doing that?

I also have not been able to move bars left and right and up above the original position.

Noted your problems. Could you have a read of my similar diagram problems that I've posted in the 'Usage' Forum under the title 'Diagram Problems' and offer advice on how you overcame them.
Thanks
Brian

I don't know why, but in the manual, on page 101 under Box Moves are Outwards Only, it says:
If your diagram has top-down orientation, you can only drag a descendant box downwards (or back); and you can drag an ancestor box upwards (or back).

However on page 102 it says Bar Moves are Outwards and Sideways, so you need to do Bar Moves by grabbing the diamond on the child bar.  This may not solve your original problem, but it may make it easier.  Before Box and Bar moving, this All Relatives took up 33 sheets of A3.

After Box and Bar, I got it down to 12.

If you want to move individual siblings, then you need to do Fixed Point Moving instead.  There is information on this if you click the More button in the Movement Control Box.

I tried overlapping multiple trees and saving the diagram.  When I reopened they were still exactly where I left them.  I tried this with two different files and up to five descendant trees on the same diagram.

If you are doing multiple moves in a diagram there are a couple of features on the wish list you may want to consider voting for: Group/Ungroup on Diagrams  and Grid Lock on Diagrams.  They won't necessarily solve your problems, but they could make it easier.

I am a very new user and have been trying for 10 days to get started on the all relative diagram. Every time I move a box/boxes where I want them, save and then come back it has changed to its original position. I have gone through all the info I can but can't get past this. Is there a secret, please. I would be very grateful for any help.

Remember if you need to move the boxes about then you will need to save the diagram as a Family historian chart (File/Save Diagram as) and open the chart using the File/Open Diagram, next time you want to work on it.