The Tree view is where most people start. The Charts menu is for answering a specific question, or for printing.
Descendants
One ancestor at the top, everyone who came from them below. This is the reunion chart. It gets wide fast; a couple with eight children in 1850 can have several hundred descendants by now. Use the Generations picker in the Style panel to keep it readable.
Ancestors
One person at the start, their parents next, grandparents beyond, and so on. This is the chart everyone recognizes. Good for seeing how far back each line goes and where the gaps are. Sideways relatives (siblings, cousins, second marriages) are left out by design. Top-down puts the person at the bottom with the generations rising above them; Left-right puts them at the left with ancestors to the right, the usual pedigree reading order. A line joins each father and mother and drops to their child, with a heart at the junction: click the heart to fold away everything above that couple, click the grey heart to bring them back. The Generations picker in the Style panel does the same for the whole chart at once. Someone who appears on two lines (cousins who married, somewhere back) is drawn once, at the nearest generation, with a dashed line showing the other path to them.
Relation Report
Choose two people and GED-VIEW shows how they are related and the path between them through their common ancestor. Second cousin once removed, and here is why. This answers the "how is Uncle Bob actually related to us" question.
Choosing the starting person
Every chart is drawn from one person outward. The Descendants and Ancestors charts have a searchable person list in the sidebar; pick anyone and the chart redraws from them. The Relation Report has two pickers, one for each person. Your picks can be pinned, so the people you keep coming back to stay at hand.
Living people
Charts show whoever is in the file. If a chart is going to be printed or shared, and the file includes living people, think about whether their birthdates belong on paper. The desktop program that made the file can usually export a version with living people trimmed; there is a guide on that.
Exporting
Every chart exports to PDF and PNG. Descendants and Ancestors print best on a single page for a few generations; a full descendants chart of a large family needs several sheets.
Hourglass
Ancestors above, descendants below, one person at the waist. The upper half works like the Ancestors chart (couple lines, hearts to fold a branch, dashed lines where someone appears on two lines); the lower half like the Descendants chart. Click a person to see their details in a side panel, and from there make them the chart root; double-click goes to their profile. The Generations picker caps both halves at once.
Fan
Ancestors in a semicircle: the person at the center, parents in the ring above them, grandparents beyond, father's side on the left. A fan packs far more generations into one screen than a boxes-and-lines chart, and the faint empty segments show at a glance where a line runs out. Click a segment for the person's details in a side panel, and from there make them the chart center; double-click goes to their profile. The Generations picker sets how many rings are drawn.
Timeline
Everyone's lifespan as a bar on a shared year axis, married couples side by side with a small bracket joining them at the wedding year. Scrolling moves around; hold Ctrl and scroll to zoom (Alt and scroll stretches just the year axis). Pick a person and choose the scope: Close family (the person, their spouses, parents, grandparents, siblings and children), all their Ancestors, or all their Descendants. Living people get a faded, open-ended bar that runs to today; people whose dates are unknown are counted in a note instead of drawn. This is the chart for seeing who overlapped with whom: which grandparent a child actually knew, or how three generations shared one decade.
Next
Open Charts, choose Descendants from your earliest known ancestor, and see how wide it gets.