Family Trees are diagrams that visualize the different generations of a family and the relations between family members. This makes it easy to quickly see your ancestors and family history across the generations. In this article I will review MyDraw - a powerful diagramming software for Mac and Windows that lets you create stunning Family Tree diagrams with ease.
MyDraw is a fully-featured diagram software for Mac and Windows that offers a ton of features and support for many diagram types, but in this article I will focus on its ability to create Family Tree diagrams. If you are interested in the other features of the software, too, then take a look at the followin article:
Best Diagram Software for Mac and Windows
Family Tree diagrams in MyDraw consist of two types of shapes:
- Person shapes - a rectangle shape that represents a person. It's blue for males and pink for females. Contains person's name, photo and life span. Double click the shape to enter person's details.
- Family shapes - a circle shape that represents a family link between two persons. It's green for unmarried couples, blue for married ones and red for divorced ones. In the case of married couples the family shape contains the year of the marriage and in the case of divorced couples it contains the years of the marriage and the divorce. Double click the shape to enter relation details.
To quickly start creating a Family Tree diagram, open the Family Tree template category from MyDraw's home screen and select any of the family tree templates to open it - see the screenshot below (click it to zoom it). You can then press Ctrl + A from the keyboard (Command + A for Mac users) to select all shapes and then Delete from the keyboard to delete them. Then drag and drop a person shape from the library on the left to the drawing area. Double click the person shape to enter his name and other information. Right click it to add a spouse. Double click the family (circle) shape that appeared to enter relation details. Right click the family (circle) shape to add a child.
When ready click File -> Save to save the Family Tree to a file. If you want to preserve all shape styles and formatting, save the Family Tree diagram to a "MyDraw XML Drawing (*.ndx)". You can also save it to the popular file format for Family Trees - GEDCOM by selecting "Genealogical Data Communication (*.ged)" for file type. You can also save the diagram to GEDCOM format by clicking File -> Export -> Family Tree (GED). Note that when saving to GEDCOM or any other of the non-native for MyDraw file formats you may lose some special shape styles of formatting.
This is how easy it is to create stunning Family Tree diagrams on Mac and Windows with MyDraw. MyDraw is not free, it currently costs $69 (a one-time payment), but it's totally worth it considering all the features and content you get. See for yourself by downloading a free 30-day trial from MyDraw's website:
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