Basic Drawing Using TikZ - ShareLaTeX, Online-LaTeX-Editor

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Basic Drawing Using TikZ (/blog/2013/08/27/tikz-seriespt1.html)
To see the corresponding video for this blog post click here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=pcIzeN46ETc).
In the next few blog posts were going to show you some of the interesting things you can do
using the TikZ package. The TikZ package is a package that allows you to draw high quality and

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often quite complex diagrams. In this post were going to show you some of the basics and

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show you how to draw simple shapes and lines.

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To get started with TikZ we need to load up the TikZ package:

\usepackage{tikz}
Now whenever we want to create a TikZ diagram we need to use the tikzpicture environment.
\begin{tikzpicture}

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Basic Shapes

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One of the simplest and most commonly used commands in TikZ is the \draw command. To

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draw a straight line we use this command, then we enter a starting co-ordinate, followed by

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two dashes before the ending co-ordinate. We then finish the statement by closing it with a
semicolon.
\draw (0,0) -- (4,0);

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We can then add more co-ordinates in like this to make it a square:

\draw (0,0) -- (4,0) -- (4,4) -- (0,4) -- (0,0);

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However this isnt particularly good style. As we are drawing a line that ends up in the same
place we started, it is better to finish the statement with the keyword cycle rather than the
last co-ordinate.
\draw (0,0) -- (4,0) -- (4,4) -- (0,4) -- cycle;

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To simplify this code further we can use the rectangle keyword after the starting co-ordinate
and then follow it with the co-ordinate of the corner diagonally opposite.
\draw (0,0) rectangle (4,4);
We can also add lines that arent straight. For example, this is how we draw a parabola:
\draw (0,0) parabola (4,4);

To add a curved line we use control points. We begin with our starting co-ordinate, then use
two dots followed by the keyword controls and then the co-ordinates of our control points
separated by an and. Then after two more dots we have the final point. These control points
act like magnets attracting the line in their direction.
\draw (0,0) .. controls (0,4) and (4,0) .. (4,4);

We can then add a circle like this. The first co-ordinate is the circles centre and the length in
brackets at the end is the circles radius.
\draw (2,2) circle (3cm);

This is how we draw an ellipse. This time the lengths in the brackets separated by an and, are
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the x-direction radius and the y-direction radius respectively.

\draw (2,2) ellipse (3cm and 1cm);

This is how we draw an arc. In the final bracket we enter the starting angle, the ending angle
and the radius. This time they are separated by colons.
\draw (3,0) arc (0:75:3cm);

To customise the way these lines are drawn we add extra arguments into the \draw
command. For example we can edit the circle we drew so that the line is red, thick and
dashed.
\draw[red,thick,dashed] (2,2) circle (3cm);

Grids
Very often when drawing diagrams we will want to draw a grid. To do this we use the \draw
command followed by by some additional arguments. For example we specify the grid step
size using step= and a length. Weve also specified the colour gray and told it to make the
lines very thin. After these arguments we enter the co-ordinates of the bottom left corner,
followed by the keyword grid and then the co-ordinates of the top right corner.
\draw[step=1cm,gray,very thin] (-2,-2) grid (6,6);

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If we want to remove the outer lines around this grid we can crop the size slightly like this.
\draw[step=1cm,gray,very thin] (-1.9,-1.9) grid (5.9,5.9);

Colour Filling
Now lets add a shape onto our grid and colour it in. To do this we use the \fill command
instead of the \draw command. Then in square brackets we enter a colour. For example this
specifies a colour that is 40% blue mixed with 60% white. Then we just specify a closed shape
as we would normally.
\fill[blue!40!white] (0,0) rectangle (4,4);

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If we wanted to add a border around this shape we could change it to the \filldraw
command and then alter the arguments so that we have both a fill colour and a draw colour
specified.
\filldraw[fill=blue!40!white, draw=black] (0,0) rectangle (4,4);

If instead of one solid colour we want a colour gradient, we could change it to the \shade
command. Then in the square brackets we specify a left colour and a right colour.
\shade[left color=blue,right color=red] (0,0) rectangle (4,4);

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Instead of doing it from left to right we could do it from top to bottom.

\shade[top color=blue,bottom color=red] (0,0) rectangle (4,4);

Or we could even change it by specifying an inner and outer colour like this.
\shade[inner color=blue,outer color=red] (0,0) rectangle (4,4);

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Finally we could also add a border to this by using the \shadedraw command and adding a
draw colour.
\shadedraw[inner color=blue,outer color=red, draw=black] (0,0) rectangle (4,4);

Axes
Lets finish this post by adding some labeled axes to our grid. To do this we draw two normal
lines both from (0,0), but well make them thick and add arrowheads using a dash and a
pointed bracket.
\draw[thick,->] (0,0) -- (4.5,0);
\draw[thick,->] (0,0) -- (0,4.5);

We can also label our axes using nodes. To do this we add the keyword node into both draw
statements next to the end co-ordinates, followed by an anchor specification in square
brackets and the text in curly brackets. Every node we create in TikZ has a number of anchors.
So when we specify the north west anchor for the x-axis node, we are telling TikZ to use the
anchor in the top left hand corner to anchor the node to the co-ordinate.
\draw[thick,->] (0,0) -- (4.5,0) node[anchor=north west] {x axis};
\draw[thick,->] (0,0) -- (0,4.5) node[anchor=south east] {y axis};

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To finish our axes we can add in ticks and numbering like this:
\foreach \x in {0,1,2,3,4}
\draw (\x cm,1pt) -- (\x cm,-1pt) node[anchor=north] {$\x$};
\foreach \y in {0,1,2,3,4}
\draw (1pt,\y cm) -- (-1pt,\y cm) node[anchor=east] {$\y$};

This clever piece of code uses two for each loops to systematically go along the axes adding
the ticks and numbers. In each one, the variable x or y takes on all of the numbers in the curly
brackets, each in turn and executes the \draw command.
This concludes our discussion on basic drawing in TikZ. If you want to play around with the
document we created in this post you can access it here
(https://www.sharelatex.com/project/521b4a1206bf09190f129751). In the next post well look
exporting TikZ code from GeoGebra. Please do keep in touch with us via Facebook
(https://www.facebook.com/ShareLaTeX), Twitter (https://twitter.com/sharelatex) & Google+
(https://plus.google.com/115074691861228882827/posts).

Other posts in this series

Generating TikZ Code from GeoGebra (https://www.sharelatex.com/blog/2013/08/28/tikzseries-pt2.html)
Creating Flowcharts with TikZ (https://www.sharelatex.com/blog/2013/08/29/tikz-seriespt3.html)
Circuit Diagrams Using Circuitikz (https://www.sharelatex.com/blog/2013/09/02/tikz-serieshttps://de.sharelatex.com/blog/2013/08/27/tikz-series-pt1.html

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pt4.html)
Creating Mind Maps Using TikZ (https://www.sharelatex.com/blog/2013/09/04/tikz-seriespt5.html)
Posted by Josh Cassidy on 27 Aug 2013

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gbmhunter

2 years ago

Great tutorial thanks! Just started out learning TikZ with the WP-QuickLatex plugin on a Wordpress
site.
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