Create Relatives Tree

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This dialog lets you configure relatives trees. The configuration is performed in three steps before the system creates the tree:

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Step 1: Selection of relatives: blood relatives or all relatives. Blood relatives refer to all descendants of the oldest ancestors of the primary person. A generational limit can be set for the determination of the oldest ancestors of the primary person. The number of generations includes the generation of the primary person. 'All relatives' includes the descendants of the oldest ancestors of all relatives of the primary person, including families connected by partnerships. In a normal family file, 'all relatives' generally includes many more persons than blood relatives alone.

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Step 2: Determination of the required descendant trees of the oldest ancestors, which are combined to form the relatives tree. For these descendant trees, the primary persons and their record numbers are included in the list for step 3. Descendant trees for blood relatives are created first. Descendant trees for other relatives are then created if 'all relatives' is selected.

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Step 3: The order of the determined descendant trees can then be changed using the four buttons with arrows. They can also be turned on and off using the checkboxes in the first column. This can lead to significant changes, not because descendant trees are moved or turned on/off, but because the order of primary persons for whom descendant trees are created is changed. The descendant tree created for the first primary person extends from the oldest ancestor to one of the youngest descendants. The descendant trees created after this generally include persons who are already included in a previously-created descendant tree. This means that duplicates will be created and no further descendants will appear at the duplicates. Instead, cross-references will be created to the first instance of the duplicate. You can get an idea of the results of various changes by trying various configurations.

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Step 4: Finally, the configured relatives tree is created. Using the radio buttons compressed and uncompressed you select whether the descendant trees are positioned close together or with a distance for a better overview. The compressed positioning creates a smaller graphic, the uncompressed positioning creates a bigger graphic.

The data in this dialog (the selected configuration) remain active in the current session until a new family file is opened, a new Gedcom file is imported or until a new primary person is selected. These data are saved with the other graphic data for the current treeview in a treeview file *.trv and can be imported from the file later. This ensures that the tree does not need to be configured from scratch every time when experimenting with configurations. Instead, small changes can be made from the prior settings.

Hint: For displaying complicated relationship structures, there are a number of options that each carry their own advantages and disadvantages. In addition to the relatives trees explained here, you can also use grandparents' descendant trees or great-grandparents' descendant trees. In addition, you can manually combine any number of separate trees into one graphic. This is described in the section Combination of Multiple Trees.

Note: All partnerships define a relative status, regardless of the partnership status. This also includes non-married partnerships without children. To avoid this, the partner who is not intended to belong to a relatives tree must be excluded (see Treeview Options, Graphic Content tab).

Details about the structures can be found in the Appendix in the section Tree Structures, Relatives Tree.