Families of Generally Acyclic Directed Graphs in Three Dimensions

Most family trees are planar, representing time or generations along the vertical axis and siblings and spouses both across the horizontal. For a while now, I've been working with the idea of separating the spousal and sibling relationships into two dimensions and building family trees in three. This lends well to large and extended families.

Originally I had imagined building these trees from the sort of dowels and styrofoam primitives you can get at hobby stores. But I knew the things wouldn't support themselves. It might still be possible with threaded metal rods-- something stronger and more rigid. Such a beast might even make a nice mobile.

Since the concept is already patented (in a distressingly convoluted presentation), there's no issue sharing with you the sketches that I've made (pay no attention to the symbolic modifiers). The image above shows a mock-up that I made using a fairly simple modelling program. Currently I'm researching more robust programs that can handle heredity and inheritance (of the model's physical traits) better. But i'm pretty happy with what is shown here already.