First Look at Legacy Family Tree Version 8.0 - Post 12: Family Bow-Tie Chart

Rather than do a comprehensive look step-by-step at Legacy Family Tree Version 8.0 - I did that for Version 7.0, and 8.0 is an improvement on Version 7.0 - I'm going to highlight new (or old) features I find as I work through the program screens.  New or updated features in Legacy Family Tree are listed in Legacy Family Tree 8.0 Now Available.

Today, it's the "Family Bow-Tie Chart" feature.  The description of this feature is:

"Displays the ancestors of both the husband and wife, as well as their children."

A "bow tie chart" shows the ancestors of a couple for a selected number of generations - the father's ancestors on one side of the chart, and the mother's ancestors on the other side.

Let's see how this works - I will use my parents family as the basis:

1)  On any View tab, click on the "Reports" menu item and then find the "Legacy Charting" button:

2)  I clicked the "Legacy Charting" button on the screen above, and the Legacy Charting program opened, and I could select the type of chart to create:

The "Family Bow Tie" chart is at the bottom of the list.

3)  I clicked on the "Family Bow Tie" chart icon and the chart opened:

The initial chart had only three generations of ancestors for my father (on the left) and my mother (on the right.  My parents were in the middle of the chart, and their three children were below them.  Zooming in to see my parents, I saw:

4)  I wanted it prettier - with gender colors (blue for males, pink for females), with a larger type font, wider boxes, a larger title, wider lines, and no pictures (because I don't have face pictures for all of the people).  I did all of that on the "Appearances" tab.  I also wanted six generations on the chart, and that was on the "Home" tab.

After making all of those changes, I came out with a chart with six generations on each side, is readable, and is 59.5 inches wide (7 sheets) and 66 inches high (6 sheets).  Here is the 100% view:

Here is a wider view of this chart:

5)  How many generations will this chart take?  I went up to 9 generations, and the program showed me a chart 85 inches wide (over 7 feet wide) and 473 inches high (almost 40 feet!).

Hmmm, I'll pass on printing that - 430 pages!  If this were made top-to-bottom instead of left-to-right, it could wall paper a large room!

6)  That is pretty much what I wanted in this chart.  I like this format with father's ancestors on one side and them other's ancestors on the other side.

I would like to have thumbnail pictures, but when I added those, the box height was much more because at least one of the preferred photos was too large and extended the box.

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Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver