Family Historian User Group

Hi, prospective buyer here who has been playing with a demo version. I've noticed that moving parts of diagrams around does not seem as intuitive as I thought. Some other programs allow you to grab a box and drag it anywhere on the diagram but FH doesn't seem to allow this. In particular, I built an all relatives diagram and found it very difficult to move parts of the diagram to conserve space as it wouldn't allow me to move boxes where there were ancestors and descendants. Am I missing something or is this how it is supposed to work.

Thanks

ID:4509

You can't overlay boxes if that's what you mean.

You can use combinations of bar and box movement to stagger families down the page if you want.

Jane, thanks for the prompt reply. That wasn't really what I was getting at. What I wanted to do was move a section of the diagram over to one side thus allowing a print on smaller paper. The system didn't seem to want to let me do this and, in one particular part of the diagram it wouldn't move anywhere but up or down. I was expecting to be able to drag a box (or boxes) anywhere on the page and relevant lines would follow. The best analogy I can use would be by using something like Treedraw where you can drag/drop objects anywhere you like.

Hi, I am new to the program too, and I would have to agree with you, but after spending some time staggering boxes and not putting children in their birth order together with adjusting the scaling I managed to fit the detail on one page.
You only seem to be able to move the boxes in one plain at a time.

Right, well I've now bought this and I'm starting to wish I hadn't. Can anybody explain to me how I move a box in a diagram please ? The scenario is that I have made a diagram of ancestors, the root of the diagram sits at the top of the diagram (straddling a page break) and no attempts have been successful in moving it (other than down !). I was expecting to click on the box and drag it elsewhere on the diagram but it won't let me. Not very intuitive, to say the least. Any help would be most appreciated.

Hi dhj,
There are several ways you can move diagrams around either to change the diagram or to make an exisiting digram fit better on a page.

To shuffle page borders around (if your diagram spreads over more than one sheet of paper that your printer uses) you need first to click 'show page boudaries' in the diagram toolbar. This will display dotted lines to outline your pages. You can move the pages around by left click & drag on the intersection of page boundaries or rescale your diagram (fit more or fewer boxes per page) by right clicking & dragging on the intersection of page boundaries.

To move boxes around 'inside' a diagram you need to use the 'movement control' box on the diagram tool bar.

There is much more on these aspects in help if you search under 'diagram toolbar'

Finally in V4 - the save diagram as PDF option I find excellent for fitting a diagram to the correct size of paper for your printer. It will usually fit the diagram excellently to the page - you only need to ensure you're not being too ambitious in terms of how many relatives you try to include - else everything is rather small [smile]

hope this helps

Cheers
Chris

Chris, many thanks for the very prompt response. I'll try those things out.

Thanks again

If you just want to avoid the boxes splitting over the page boundaries there is a little icon just to the right of the page boundary one that will shuffle the boxes around to avoid the boundaries.

Margaret

dhj

My post at http://www.fhug.org.uk/cgi-bin/index.cg ... y&num=4374 may also be helpful to you.