complex chart questions!

[Derrick]

I want to create a chart that has a source couple, three of their children, those children's spouses (two marriages are involved with one of them), parents of those spouses, and two grandchildren of the source couple with their marriages. I want to show inter-relations among four families.

The big deal in this is that I can't seem to generate a chart that includes a couple with both sets of their parents. What I'd like to do is--under the relative chart, where it asks for "who"--to press both of those radio buttons, to select both members of a couple. Is there a way to merge two family charts, perhaps?

First, then--are there any suggestions for help here? I've been starting with a relative chart for one of the children. It's only about a dozen people, but however I do it, I can only get about half of who I want.

Second--since I can't figure that out on my own, I've been trying to add in boxes. When I select a box, ctrl-click on it, and "add box," however, this only gives the option to add a child box. Is there a way to add a spouse box instead--with the connection that looks like a parallelogramy-style bracket instead of a line?

Thanks for your help!

[Frank Zwolinski]

Re: complex chart questions!

Hi Derrick,

I do not have a suggestion for you on how to do this but may I suggest that you call the folks at tech support? They are wonderful! I have called them many times and found them to be fast, courteous, and always solved my problem.

Good Luck,
Frank

[ttl]

Re: complex chart questions!

The main issue you're running up against is that the relative chart will only pull in blood relatives of your source person and their spouses. Since the spouses' parents are not related, they'll be left off.

My recommendation always is to find the person who is related to the most people out of those you'd like to include, perhaps one of the grandchildren, and start with a relative chart with this person as the source.

You are restricted to adding a child box, which has bearing on the forced box size as well as available lines. While you can do this, for parents or spouses it might make more sense to simply add a text caption (Edit->Add Text->Caption) and turn on the box options around it to match the rest of your boxes. To get access to these settings, just add the caption, click out of it to deselect it, select it again, and choose the upper left option from the top menu in the Box settings in the tool bar on the left.

It is a simple, albeit tedious, procedure to create connecting lines with the Edit->Add Shape->Line command. Two tips here that might be of assistance is that you can constrain the line angle to 45º and 90º by holding down the shift key when you drag the end of the line, and you can hide the end of the line behind the box (making length less important) by using the Object->Layer command.

Hope this helps.

[Derrick]

Re: complex chart questions!

Thank you--those are great suggestions, Tim. I'm also glad to know that I'm not just missing something.