Family trees have long been a valuable visual tool for geneticists in identifying clusters of inherited traits and genotypes. As more data are collected, drawing the graphs by hand becomes impractical and, for this reason, we have developed the pedigree software CraneFoot. It can process any family graph with minimal computational cost by making a pedigree transformation that enables the use of a linear node positioning algorithm. The program is designed for automated drawing to printed media and efficient visual classification of genetically interesting families from large data sets. It also incorporates a robust pedigree topology check with detailed error messages.