* Saving Customised Blank Diagrams

[Mark1834]

I'm experimenting with creating a custom diagram from first principles. I click on the Charts toolbar button, then Blank Diagram to give me a blank canvas to work on. Right-click and select Insert into Diagram > Descendant Tree.. I select the root person, and the diagram displays as expected using my custom default layout.

From the main menu, I click on Diagram > Save Diagram As... > Custo Diagram Type... and give it a name. I then close it without saving the actual diagram, as I just want the template, not the specific example with the defined root.

Charts tool bar button > Custom Diagrams > my new template opens with a dialogue box asking me to select the Root Person, which I do, and the displayed diagram is completely blank .

Is that a bug, or am I doing something wrong?

[tatewise]

You don't even need to insert anything into the Blank Diagram before saving it as a Custom Diagram Type.
When the 'blank' Custom Diagram Type is opened it always prompts for a Root Person.
That is strange because if you check the Options there is no Tree type specified, so the Root Person cannot be used.
If you then try and Insert Into Diagram the tree Root Person is empty, so the original Root Person is not used as a default.

It looks like an 'oversight' bug to me.

[LornaCraig]

I agree it's an oversight bug that the dialogue box asks you to select a root person, for the reason Mike has given. (Incidentally this happens even when Tool > Preferences > Diagrams > Enable One-Click diagram Display from Toolbar is ticked, although this should inhibit that dialogue box if an individual/couple has already been selected in the records window.)

But it's correct that the new diagram displayed is then blank. Bear in mind that you can insert different kinds of tree into a blank diagram. If you had inserted an Ancestor diagram, a Descendant diagram and an All Relatives diagram into the same blank 'canvas', some with individuals as the root and others with couples as the root, which would you expect to be used for your new diagram? All that can be saved is the 'blankness' of the original diagram!

When creating diagram types you don't need to start with a blank diagram. Just create a particular diagram with your preferred customisations and save that as a diagram type. You will need to do that for each type - Ancestor, Descendant, Both, All Relatives, Everyone, etc.

[Mark1834]

Thanks folks. I’ve got a few customisations to the standard diagrams, but they badly need rationalising. I’m tempted to reset diagrams back to their out of the box on one of my FH installations and work through the options systematically.

I can always restore from backup if that proves too ambitious.

[Mark1834]

A follow up question please. I'm working on a custom diagram to highlight Close/Extended family DNA matches in a compact form. I use a custom attribute where the value is the relationship (e.g. 2nd cousin) and a box condition to display the box in a distinct colour.

The starting point is a standard Descendants Chart, starting with the common individual, but there are obviously many branches with no matches that I hide manually. If I make a mistake, I can't see any way of undoing the hide. The regular Edit>Undo only works for data changes, not layout, and I can't find an "unhide" option. Hopefully there is a better alternative than abandoning the edit and starting again?

[ColeValleyGirl]

I don't do a lot with diagrams, but does Diagram > Hide/Show Boxes help? (ALT D H) . Once you've shown all the hidden boxes, you can unhide selected boxes (right click on the box and untick Hidden) and then Hide/Show Boxes again to hide the ones that should be hidden.

[Mark1834]

Thanks Helen - that certainly helps. I found that I was making the same "mistake" repeatedly, and it turns out to be a limitation/bug in FH diagrams.

Start with this model family, and hide the two wives. For one family, it just deletes the wife, but retains the child, which is what I want. But for the other, it hides the wife and deletes (not just hides) their children from the diagram. That means that it is not possible to produce a link to "First Family Person" analogous to the "Second Family Person" shown, even if I hide "Second Wife" and "Second Family Person" first to get them out of the way.

I can sort of understand why that might be, as it would be difficult to show both children without the wives, but that's not what I want to do. I want to show just "Start Person" and "First Family Person", and that's not possible.

hide.PNG (15.06 KiB) Viewed 1306 times

[ColeValleyGirl]

Weird -- but diagrams are one of the features of FH I use least, so can't suggest anything.

[tatewise]

Strictly speaking, it does not 'delete' the child but uses the Expansion Button to hide the First Family Person.
I had hoped that by using the Expansion Buttons it would be possible to hide the Second Family Person and reveal the First Family Person which would then leave only one descendant and FH would be happy, but no that did not work.
Is it possible that the above behaviour is a bug?

I also wondered if it mattered whether the File Root was a descendant of First Family Person or Second Family Person but that did not make any difference.

What did work is to change the Diagram > Options > General tab, Spouse display options to 'One box per marriage'.
Then hiding the 2nd Spouse hides the Second Family Person but First Family Person remains displayed.

[LornaCraig]

From your illustration it's not clear if you are displaying expansion buttons in FH. (If not, Use Diagram > Expand/Close Branches > Show Expansion Buttons, or simply click the ‘button’ icon in the diagram toolbar.) As Mike has said, this will show you that the First Family Person has not been deleted from the diagram, their branch has simply been closed (un-expanded).

The FH Help file explains the ‘Hide Selected Boxes’ option: “All selected boxes will be hidden. When you hide a box, the whole branch leading 'outwards' from that box is also hidden. For example, if you hide an ancestor box the whole branch of ancestors leading out from that box is hidden.” What it doesn’t say is that after a hidden box has been revealed again any branch extending from them remains un-expanded by default, but can be expanded again using the expansion button.

The odd exception you have discovered is that one child (or one set of siblings) remains displayed even when the their mother has been hidden. It seems to depend on the order in which the families were added to the starting person, and (even more oddly) is unaffected by subsequently changing the order of the spouses. I think this must be a bug.

EDIT:
If the starting Person (or indeed any person in a descendants diagram) has only one spouse, and the spouse is hidden in the diagram, their child/children will still be displayed. This may be intentional, as it would be useful in the situation you describe, where you do want to see the children. The problem arises when a person has more than one spouse. In that case hiding all the spouses hides the children of all but one of the spouses. And as far as I can tell, the children displayed are always the children of the first spouse who was created. This cannot be changed by changing the order of the spouses!

[Mark1834]

Thanks again folks. I'll raise it with CP, as it certainly seems inconsistent. If there is only one spouse, it's straightforward to hide non-blood relatives in the Descendant Diagram, as in this example from the Sample Project. However, if there are multiple spouses, FH seems to decide which ones you can display.

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My Edit: Snap, Lorna - we've done the same experiment. I accept it would be difficult to display children only from multiple marriages, but FH seems to take a rigid approach to stop that happening.

[Mark1834]

I've taken Mike's suggestion a step further, and selected the "No Spouse Info" option for the Chart display. That seems to make it behave more predictably - the spouses are not there, so there is nothing to hide, and hiding one branch leaves others intact.

I'll go back to my original diagram this evening, and see if I can produce exactly what I want from that.

[tatewise]

EDIT:
If the starting Person (or indeed any person in a descendants diagram) has only one spouse, and the spouse is hidden in the diagram, their child/children will still be displayed. This may be intentional, as it would be useful in the situation you describe, where you do want to see the children. The problem arises when a person has more than one spouse. In that case hiding all the spouses hides the children of all but one of the spouses. And as far as I can tell, the children displayed are always the children of the first spouse who was created. This cannot be changed by changing the order of the spouses!

I disagree with your last few sentences. The children displayed are always for the last Family, i.e. leftrightmost Spouse on the Spouse tab and lowest in the Focus Window. Changing the order of the Spouses does change which children are displayed. To get a clear idea of what happens it is necessary to display a new Diagram after changing Family relationships.

Mark, yes, I also tried that option but forgot to mention that it seemed to work well too.

[LornaCraig]

The children displayed are always for the last Family, i.e. leftmost Spouse on the Spouse tab and lowest in the Focus Window.

But the last family is always the rightmost Spouse on the Spouse tab!

To get a clear idea of what happens it is necessary to display a new Diagram after changing Family relationships.

Ah, yes. If you change the order of the spouses their order is adjusted correctly in the current diagram, but in spite of that the 'wrong' children are still displayed. But if you create a new diagram then it is the children of the first spouse (the leftmost on the spouses tab) who remain displayed when spouses are hidden.

So one solution Mark could use is to temporarily swap the order of the spouses before generating the diagram.

[Mark1834]

Once I sorted out the correct diagram settings (No Spouse Details), it was fairly simple to hide unwanted branches to give me exactly what I was after. This is a composite of three Saved Charts, using a custom text scheme that shows just the relationship (I am "Root" in all three). The full version to be shared within the family has full names and life dates as well of course!

I'll still raise it with CP, as it might stop somebody else wandering down the same cul-de-sac.

DNA matches (redacted).PNG (45.96 KiB) Viewed 1158 times