What is a fan chart, and how do I make one?
A fan chart shows your ancestors in rings round you, one generation per ring. Family by Zaweba draws one over 240 degrees from View, Fan chart.
A fan chart is a family tree drawn as a set of rings, with one person at the centre, their parents in the first ring, grandparents in the second, and each further generation one ring further out. In Family by Zaweba you make one by opening your tree and choosing View, Fan chart, or pressing Ctrl+4. The chart spreads the ancestors over 240 degrees and centres on whoever you were looking at.
Why the fan shape works
Every generation back doubles the number of ancestors: two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, sixteen in the next. A conventional tree drawn as boxes gets very wide very fast. Rings handle that doubling naturally, because each ring is longer than the one inside it and so has room for twice as many people.
The other strength is that gaps are obvious. An ancestor you haven't found leaves a hole in their ring, and the holes line up by branch. A fan chart shows how complete each part of your research is in a way a list cannot.
Making one, from an empty start
Install Family and open it. If you just want to see a fan chart before entering anyone, choose File, Try the sample family, which opens an invented family with several generations already in it. Press Ctrl+4 and you have a fan chart straight away.
For your own tree, create one with File, New tree (Ctrl+N), then add yourself and work backwards. Add your parents from the Edit menu, then their parents, and so on. You don't need to fill everything in: the fan chart draws whatever is there and leaves the rest open.
If your research is already in another program, export it as GEDCOM there, and in Family use File, Import GEDCOM (Ctrl+I). Family reads GEDCOM 5.5.1 and 7.0 and gives you a report of anything it skipped or had to guess. Once the import finishes, Ctrl+4 shows the fan.
Choosing who sits at the centre
The fan centres on the person you were looking at. Usually that's you, or the home person the tree is built round. Click anyone in the chart and it recentres on them, which is a neat way to give one grandparent's line the whole chart. Ctrl+H takes you back to the home person.
Reading the names
Text on a curve is hard to read if it's done badly. Family turns names to fit the rings: in the inner rings, where segments are broad, names follow the curve, and in the outer rings, where segments are thin, names run outwards along them. You can read a whole generation by following the ring round.
A fan chart versus a pedigree
The fan and the pedigree show the same people, ancestors only, but suit different questions. The fan is best for seeing at a glance how many ancestors you have found in each generation. The pedigree view (Ctrl+2) shows 2 to 7 generations with more detail per person and gives you empty slots to add a missing parent.
A good routine uses both. Look at the fan to decide which line to work on next, switch to the pedigree to add people, and check the fan again to watch the gap close.
Getting it onto paper
The fan chart is an on screen view. When you want ancestors on paper, Family's Charts and reports makes an ancestor chart as a PDF, tiled across A4, A3 or Letter sheets with glue strips and an assembly guide, or as one large sheet for a print shop. The dialog shows the chart's size, the sheet count and the smallest text before you print.
For a quick picture to show relatives what you have found so far, though, the fan chart is hard to beat. It needs no explanation, and the gaps tend to start conversations about who might be able to fill them.
