Virginia Blakelock 0 Report post Posted January 24, 2010 This is a chart to accompany a Family Group Sheet. It starts with a portion of a 3-generation descendant chart of the father of the focus person James J. Whipple. Boxes for for the parents of his spouse Sally Johnson were copied and pasted from a 2-generation descendant chart of her father Shadrach Johnson. The groups of boxes were edited and arranged to fit on the center of the page and gray rectangles were drawn around each group to further delineate them. The white triangle to the right of William J. Whipple identifies the line of interest that is carried on. This triangle graphic was copied and pasted from my Palette (boilerplate) chart. For how to draw the connecting lines from the parent boxes to the focus person, see the message here. ------------------------------- VIDEO: Creating and using rectangles. Click on the Rectangle icon on the Drawing toolbar. Draw a rectangle around the group of boxes. Note the rectangle now covers the boxes with its own white foreground. Rightclick on the rectangle, select Properties and tick the box for Foreground: Transparent. Click on the Line tab and make the line Gray. Fine-tune the position or size of the rectangle. If you want to to color the rectangle foreground behind the chart boxes: Select the rectangle, rightclick Properties and untick Foreground: Transparent. Select a foreground color of gray. Use the Color Lookup Table to make the foreground color a lighter shade of gray. To position the gray rectangle behind the group of boxes, rightclick, select Order and 'Send to Back.' Virginia Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
cassin 0 Report post Posted April 20, 2010 This is a chart to accompany a Family Group Sheet. It starts with a portion of a 3-generation descendant chart of the father of the focus person James J. Whipple. Boxes for for the parents of his spouse Sally Johnson were copied and pasted from a 2-generation descendant chart of her father Shadrach Johnson. The groups of boxes were edited and arranged to fit on the center of the page and gray rectangles were drawn around each group to further delineate them. The white triangle to the right of William J. Whipple identifies the line of interest that is carried on. This triangle graphic was copied and pasted from my Palette (boilerplate) chart. For how to draw the connecting lines from the parent boxes to the focus person, see the message here. ------------------------------- VIDEO: Creating and using rectangles. Click on the Rectangle icon on the Drawing toolbar. Draw a rectangle around the group of boxes. Note the rectangle now covers the boxes with its own white foreground. Rightclick on the rectangle, select Properties and tick the box for Foreground: Transparent. Click on the Line tab and make the line Gray. Fine-tune the position or size of the rectangle. If you want to to color the rectangle foreground behind the chart boxes: Select the rectangle, rightclick Properties and untick Foreground: Transparent. Select a foreground color of gray. Use the Color Lookup Table to make the foreground color a lighter shade of gray. To position the gray rectangle behind the group of boxes, rightclick, select Order and 'Send to Back.' Virginia Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
cassin 0 Report post Posted April 20, 2010 Virginia, I was using VCF to make a family group chart as you have demonstrated here. However, when I create my chart, the children do not appear in chronological birth order - anyway to achieve this other than cut and paste from box to box? Thanks a lot. Pat Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Virginia Blakelock 0 Report post Posted April 21, 2010 Help says about child birth order for reports: - Children will appear in the order indicated by the Birth Order flag. - If no values have been recorded for that flag, then the birth date will be used, if known. - If some children have a Birth Order value, but others do not, then they will be sorted first by Birth Order, then by birth sort date. So, if you have a birth date for each child - and none of them has a Birth Order flag value set, they should appear in birth date order in the chart. Do any of the children have their Birth Order Flag value set? Examples of user charts are especially welcome on the forum - so let me know if you'd like to share your chart and need help attaching an image. Virginia Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
cassin 0 Report post Posted April 21, 2010 Help says about child birth order for reports:- Children will appear in the order indicated by the Birth Order flag. - If no values have been recorded for that flag, then the birth date will be used, if known. - If some children have a Birth Order value, but others do not, then they will be sorted first by Birth Order, then by birth sort date. So, if you have a birth date for each child - and none of them has a Birth Order flag value set, they should appear in birth date order in the chart. Do any of the children have their Birth Order Flag value set? Examples of user charts are especially welcome on the forum - so let me know if you'd like to share your chart and need help attaching an image. Virginia Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
cassin 0 Report post Posted April 21, 2010 Thanks Virginia - I do not use the birth order flag so this is not set. However, when I create the chart this is the order (by birthdate) they appear from top to bottom - I am using a left to right chart. 1850, 1855, 1857, 1860, 1839, 1844, 1845, 1848, 1852. Strange, eh? If you tell me how to attach images, I can do that when it gets strained out. Pat Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
RobinL 0 Report post Posted April 21, 2010 Posted Today, 10:41 PM Thanks Virginia - I do not use the birth order flag so this is not set. However, when I create the chart this is the order (by birthdate) they appear from top to bottom - I am using a left to right chart. 1850, 1855, 1857, 1860, 1839, 1844, 1845, 1848, 1852. Strange, eh? If you tell me how to attach images, I can do that when it gets strained out. Pat The orientation of the descendant box chart refers to the progression of successive generations, not to the dates within a generation. You want a "top to bottom" chart to get what you are expecting. As far as the birth dates are concerned, my guess is that the 1850, 1855, 1857 and 1860 are all seen as "irregular" dates and are sorted before any regular dates (possibly entered with non-visible characters - try re-entering them in the birth tag Tag Entry screen and make sure that the Sort Date is updated to match a "good" date). The dates 1839, 1844, 1848, 1852 are in chronological order and therefore are seen by TMG as regular. To get personal images to show within a box on a chart, you have to complete 2 steps, first attach the primary image to the _person_ not to an _event_ of that person, and secondly, in chart options > Images tab select the "on Left" case - note to be effective you often need to widen the box width on the chart options > Boxes tab. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Virginia Blakelock 0 Report post Posted April 21, 2010 Pat - I just added 9 children randomly (not entered in order of birth) to a test family, using a couple of different date formats - and the boxes appear in order in the chart. If re-entering the out-of-order dates, as Robin suggested, does not work, you may have to set the birth order flag. In the WG forum (wish it were not so with VCF) only senior members (over 100 postings) can attach images in a message. Any of the moderators will be glad to do this for you. Send me or one of the other moderators a copy of the image and what time you will be posting your message and we'll attach it for you. Good luck with your chart. Let us know if you run into any more problems - Virginia Share this post Link to post Share on other sites