Family tree builder1.3

Family tree builder puts a user-friendly interface at your disposal for easily building family trees by entering personal information. It's capable of generating plots and exporting projects to various types of content.

No setup necessary, besides .NET Framework

It's not wrapped in a setup package, so you can save the program files in any location on the disk or a USB flash drive to directly run the utility on any computer. It doesn't change your Windows registry configuration. However, you need .NET Framework installed.

Simple UI for creating family trees

As far as the GUI is concerned, Family tree builder adopts a large window split into several panes, where you can enter personal information, view details about family members, navigate Google Maps, plot charts, check out the genealogical tree, as well as access the family album.The first step is creating a project, which is saved to XML file type. You can specify the person's name, gender, date of birth and death, age, and birth place, as well as upload a photo. Custom notes can be added too.

View family information and plot charts

Once you've added information for all family members, you can study it in another pane, view given locations in Google Maps, as well as plot charts based on age distribution, birth month, births per year, deceased ratio, or age per person. It's possible to generate 3D graphs, print images, and set the average age.Family tree builder lets you switch to hierarchy mode and configure settings when it comes to the vertical and horizontal spacing, font size, colors, and other aspects. Files are auto-generated for each person added to the genealogical tree, and you can open their location in your default file explorer. Plus, the entire project can be exported to Excel or JPG format.

Evaluation and conclusion

It had minimal impact on the machine's performance in our tests, thanks to the fact that it needed a low amount of CPU and RAM to work properly. No error dialogs popped up and it didn't hang or crash.However, the interface looks more intuitive than Family tree builder actually is. The tool's not explicit about the format supported for typing personal information. Other than that, it comes loaded with handy options for creating rich genealogical trees.