Must I use the "black family box"?

Question

Can I dispense with te "black box" and show the family tress thus -  the red lines are how I want to show it but I don't know how to create such lines:

Answer 1

No, you cannot dispense with the black boxes. Family nodes (i.e. what you are calling "black box") are a requirement for the algorithm. However, you can use really, really small family nodes, e.g. with width and height set to 1. For ease of editing, I suggest following steps 1 through 3.2 as explained in Need Examples of How to setup family tree. Right before step 4 (running the layout algorithm), select all family nodes and change their width and height to 1.

You can conveniently select all family nodes by "opening" the "Current Elements" palette section

right-clicking the section's family node template and choosing "Select Matching Elements".

Changing the width and height for the selected nodes can be done in the properties grid in yEd's lower right corner.

 

After changing the size of the family nodes, you can select edges connecting to children and change their line color to red (again in the properties grid in yEd's lower right corner).  With the small family nodes and the edges from parents to families remaining black, this will result in the desired effect.

Comments

Thank you again for your help. I am getting frustrated with this. I cannot get it to work properly. When I set the size down to 1x1, every time I click the mouse in the diagram it makes a new 1x1 node. I can't get it to not apply this size to the new ones. And even on the existing ones, sometimes it finds them all, sometimes it includes these new 1x1 nodes.

I also selected Layout --> Tree (I guess that means "family tree") and it made a mess of the chart: lots of curlicues instead of the nice chart that I had. Not sure what it is supposed to accomplish but it didn't do it for me :(

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You seem to have changed the default template for new nodes by (left mouse button) double-clicking the family node template in the "Current Elements" palette section. Go to section "Shape Nodes" and double-click on one of the shape node templates. If successful, the double-clicked template's background will turn blue:

I do not really understand what you mean by

"And even on the existing ones, sometimes it finds them all, sometimes it includes these new 1x1 nodes."

 

It seems like you have a hard time with basic editing in yEd. Have you read through the yEd Manual yet? If not, please do so. We tried to make editing in yEd as intuitive as possible, but yEd does come with so many editing features that you cannot expect to understand them all without reading the available documentation.

 

Re:

I also selected Layout --> Tree (I guess that means "family tree") ...

"Layout" -> "Tree" does not mean family tree! If it did, there would not be a "Layout" -> "Family Tree" entry (it is the bottom most entry in the "Layout" menu). Did you not notice that the tree algorithm's setting dialog looks nothing like the screenshot of the family tree algorithm's setting dialog I included in Need Examples of How to setup family tree?

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