I use DNA painter, though it isn't as helpful as I would like it to be.
The main reason is that I have so few confirmed matches at sites that have a chromosome browser. Most of my confirmed matches are at ancestry and it is difficult to persuade people to upload elsewhere.
The potential is enormous, however. There is a DNA painter Facebook page where you can discuss any problems/queries.
Regards Margaret
Thank you for your reply.
I will have the same problem as you in that I do not have many confirmed matches where I also have a chromosome analysis but I hope that will change in time.
Of course now I have started trying to use this I have immediately come across the problem so often voiced on here of people doing a DNA test but not having a tree. Whilst frustrating I am not overly concerned by this as if people want to keep their tree private then so be it. Then again some of the trees I have gained access to have some delightful rubbish on them and I can see how this happens when a site owner suggests a match and if you confirm it allows you to add all the people associated with that match to your tree! Of course there are safeguards to stop you importing rubbish but it seems quite a few people do not use them. I never wholesale import anything from someone else's tree as I am more than capable of making my own mistakes without importing anyone else's.
One blessing of starting to do this is I have found some nuggets of information I did not have before and also MyHeritage obviously have scanned some records that Ancestry does not have, so that's good too.
I am fortunate in that one match I have is to a father, son, grandson group so I can see how the shared DNA changes between the three generations. One thing that initially foxed me is that the match is stronger on one chromosome with the grandson than with the "father" (i.e. his grandfather). I now assume that this may be down to my possibly having a hidden match with the grandson that I do not have with the father. then again as the difference is only small it may be of no significance at all and just coincidence or "noise"
In the above example our common ancestors are T&H. Now I have another match with some other people where the common ancestors are J&M. T&H are the parents of J&M but the threesome above are not descended from J&M but from J's brother. The match I have from J&M's descendants is not shared with the threesome which makes sense as it result of the combination of J and M's DNA and of course they do not have any of M's DNA. Similarly the matches I have with the threesome group are not shared with some of the descendants of J&M which would be as I see it because they have other ancestors whose DNA has taken precedence. (There is no question here its just me putting my thoughts down hoping to make sense of it. However if you have any thoughts you would like to add please feel free to do so).
What did initially surprise me is that the values on the chromosome where the matches stop and start can very depending what site you get them from. That is to say my initial analysis was done by ftDNA and it is that samples results that I uploaded to MyHeritage. I had assumed it would give the exact same readings for start and end points from both sites as it is the same sample, but no. However, I then remembered that I have read somewhere that this does happen and an explanation for it which as far as I can recall is it is all down to how each site performs their analysis and how they determine where to start and stop counting, if that makes sense. In reality it makes little difference as the amounts in question are small and once painted onto DNA painter you would not be able to tell. Have you experienced this and if so how did you deal with it?
I don't do facebook but thanks for the mention of the group on there.
David
