Freeform Documents: Your Own Notation
Freeform documents let you set the notation: custom symbols, line styles, colours and a legend, described to the AI and saved as design rules.
Freeform is a genogram canvas where you set the notation. Tell the AI the look you want — your own symbols, line styles, colours and legend — and it draws the diagram that way and remembers your rules for that file. Use it for a clinic or textbook notation, teaching diagrams, ecomaps, or anything the standard symbols don't cover. Freeform is on the Pro and Clinical plans and is marked beta.
Creating a Freeform document
On the Dashboard, click New and choose from the Freeform group:
- Blank freeform — custom symbols and line styles from an empty canvas
- Create with AI — describe the diagram and its rules; the AI builds both
- Recreate my notation — upload a photo of your hand-drawn map; the AI rebuilds it and learns your notation
Freeform documents count towards your plan's genogram limit.
Working with the AI
In a Freeform document the AI Assistant has a single tab that both builds and answers questions. Describe people, entities and rules in plain language, for example:
"Purple dashed line means estranged"
"Make institutions hexagons from now on"
"Draw a dashed box around the household and label it"
"Sort the siblings by age"
"Make an ecomap for Maria"
The AI can style lines and symbols, add non-person entities, draw labelled boundary boxes, place captions anywhere and connect any two items with a styled line. You can still drag, box-select (B) and connect things directly on the canvas.
Design Rules
Open the File menu (the GenogramAI logo, top left) and choose Design Rules, or click the Freeform banner at the top of the AI sidebar. The window has three tabs:
- Rules — your document's conventions as editable text. The AI reads them on every request and keeps them updated when you define new rules
- Legend — your custom key entries. Click one to rename it, or delete it. These entries appear in the on-canvas key under Custom Key and in exports
- Library — name and save the current rules, then Apply them to another Freeform document
Rules describe design conventions. Don't put client information in them.
What's different from a standard genogram
- The Views, Text Labels, Family Groups, Snap to Grid, Auto-Arrange and Library toolbar buttons are hidden. Ask the AI instead ("show birth years", "arrange the layout")
- The Canvas Key toggle (map icon) stays, and the key includes your Custom Key section
- Styling is done through the AI; the Inspector has no custom style editors
For standard McGoldrick notation, a regular genogram is simpler. To customise the standard key instead, see The Genogram Key.