MyDraw comes with two special shapes that you can use to create family tree diagrams:

• Person shape - a rectangular shape that consists of 3 parts: photo (or gender based icon if photo is not specified), name and dates. The person shapes are filled differently based on the gender of the person:
  • Blue - male
  • Pink - female
• Relationship shape - a circular shape that is connected to the spouses and their children and contains the year of the spouses marriage and the year of the divorce if they are divorced. When you place and hold the mouse pointer over a family shape, a tooltip with the exact date and place of the marriage and the divorce (if any) will be shown. The family shapes are filled differently based on the status of the family:
  • Green - the spouses live together without being married.
  • Blue - the spouses are married. The year of the marriage (if known) is shown in the center of the shape. For example: "2009".
  • Red - the spouses are divorced. The years of the marriage and the divorce (if known) are shown with a dash in the center of the shape, for example: "2009-2015".

To edit a person or a relationship shape double click it and a dialog for editing its data will open. For a person shape you can edit the person's names, photo, gender, birth and death events and for a relationship shape you can edit its marriage and divorce events. Alternatively you can edit a person or a relationship shape by right-clicking it and selecting Person Properties or Relationship Properties respectively from the context menu.

MyDraw supports incomplete dates for events (e.g. birth, marriage, etc.). You can enter only the year or the year and the month of the exact date of an event is not known.

To add a spouse to a person shape, right click it and select the Add Spouse menu option. A spouse with be added next to the selected person shape and a family shape will be placed below the spouses and connected to each of them. You can then click the family shape to add children to the family.

In case you need to build your tree in the other direction, too (i.e. from children to parents) you can right click a person shape and select the Add Parents menu option from the context menu.

All MyDraw family tree templates have the Family Tree diagram extension included. This diagram extension adds a Family Tree tab to the ribbon. Click the Settings button in this ribbon tab to modify the following family tree settings for the whole drawing:

• Date Format - the date format for family tree shape events. Can be Year 4 Digit (only the 4 digits of the dates year are shown, this is the default value) or Date (the full dates are shown).
• Show Photos - determines whether to show person photos/icons or not. By default set to true.

MyDraw comes with full support for importing and exporting family tree diagrams to the popular Genealogical Data Communication (GEDCOM) format. For more information check out the GEDCOM Import and Export topic.