A New Mirror Points Out Your Flaws And Tells You How To Fix ThemHello Guest (sign up now) Monday 10 October 2016 If you're good at puzzles,     play amongst the best Welcome to Telegraph Puzzles Your home for crosswords, sudoku, word games and puzzles online. Telegraph Puzzles has more than 15,000 mind-bending brain games and puzzles to challenge and entertain you. Join Now to start playing and win cash prizes. This feature requires the latest version of Adobe Flash Player. Join now for your chance to win cash prizes This feature requires the latest version of Adobe Flash Player Toughie - No. 1 Toughie - No. 2 Toughie - No. 3 Toughie - No. 4 Toughie - No. 5 Toughie - No. 6 Quick - No. 27,166 Cryptic - No. 27,166 Quick - No. 25,632 Cryptic - No. 26,151 Quick - No. 27,663 Cryptic - No. 26,187 This website requires flash player 9.0.115 to be installed on your computerTV guide UK - full TV listings

Select a TV region BBC News at Ten BBC Regional News and Weather Have I Got a Bit More News for You The Graham Norton Show Weather for the Week Ahead Morgana Robinson's The Agency Sir Chris Hoy: 200mph at Le Mans Sign Zone: The Great British Bake Off Sign Zone: The Hairy Bikers' Chicken and Egg ITV News at Ten The Jonathan Ross Show Tattoo Fixers on Holiday Embarrassing Bodies Down UnderWe'll Take It Away FILM: Layer Cake (2004) The Great Butterfly Adventure: Africa to Britain with the Painted Lady The First World War The Somme: Secret Tunnel Wars China in Six Easy Pieces FILM: American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile (2006) Law & Order: UK Cristiano Ronaldo - Footballing Superstar The Big Bang Theory 24 Hours in A&E Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares USA Sarah Beeny's Four Rooms FILM: A Most Wanted Man (2014) FILM: Kick-Ass 2 (2013) FILM: Grown Ups (2010)

FILM: I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007) On Benefits: Single & Skint Benefits House: Me & My 26 Kids Dara O Briain's Go 8 Bit Brit Cops: Rapid Response To the Manor Born WWII: Countdown to Victory 8 Out of 10 Cats What Happens in Kavos Huge Hits All Night! Sky News at Ten Sky News at 11 with Anna Bottingcapiz shell chandelier cost plus Sky News on the Hourchandelier elevation cad block State of the Race with Kate Bolduanchandelier atm bobino Sky Sports News at Ten Live House of Commons Launch of BBC Parliament's New Look Northern Ireland Assembly Questions Tower Pie Maker Pick of the Day CMA Music Festival 2016 The Essay: Brick, Stone, Glass, Steel

Book at Bedtime: Conrad and Eleanor Book of the Week: The Invention of Angela Carter As BBC World Service Coming Up on 5 Live Sports Extra You'll Never Be 16 Again The News Quiz Extra Foley and McColl: The Interview Sign up or log in to customize your list. Here's how it works: Anybody can ask a question The best answers are voted up and rise to the top I have been making graphics (mostly flow graphs) for my presentations, lately, using Powerpoint and most recently LucidChart. I kind of avoided using Latex for this purpose as I had a feeling that its not going to be easy. Anyways, now I have decided to learn and master this powerful tool but going through the manual ,as I expected, is not a good idea for a jump start. So I was wondering if I can get some good advices that I should flow while making graphics in my beamer presentations. One thing that I have noticed that one needs to specify coordinates for everything. Is it a good idea to first draw a grid on slide and then proceed?

So please contribute practices that you have found to be useful for generating graphics using tikz package. I am looking forward to hear what experts have to say in this regardWhenever you have color, shape, fonts, alignment, define a TikZ style for it and use it. Don't apply such formatting details to nodes or edges, apply the style. A single point for consistent customizing.Start with a base node style (font family, base color), define styles which use base styles and add size or color or alignment - no repetitions, single points for global changes.Have consistent TikZ commands or command sequences, which can be reused and changed.For every value needed, such as distances, declare a constant via \def or a TikZ length command, so you can use it repeatedly and adjust it at a single source code position to customize a whole drawing or a lot of drawings.So you can change a reference coordinate, and all other positions will be automatically adjusted. Let TikZ calculate for you.

Once certain points such as corners are defined, use TikZ syntax to define a relative positions such as middle points and intersection points. Let TikZ do the geometry for you. If you change the reference points or image size, all will automatically adjust.Especially in non-trivial drawings, edges between named coordinates are much clearer to read than using coordinate numbers everywhere.Don't repeat things - if you cannot apply a bunch of properties via styles, use a scope to apply settings to a whole area of a drawing. Also here, it's easy to change that part at a single position.If you need to repeat things, benefit from the power of TikZ \foreach loops to reduce the amount of repeated code. Don't nest TikZ pictures. There is always another way to do it. Don't try to use everything from Stefan Kottwitz's otherwise mostly excellent answer in your first TikZ graphic. More generally, don't try to learn everything at once. Even if your initial code is longer, less flexible and harder to maintain.

When you have sufficient knowledge to produce a picture, add one complication as appropriate e.g. a loop or a style. When you can do basic loops or styles without too much trouble, add one more thing. Don't use \def unless (1) you cannot use a LaTeX command creation macro ( ewcommand*, ewcommand, ewlength, ewcounter etc.) and (2) you understand why you need \def and (3) you understand the consequences of using \def. Not specific to TikZ: annotate your code so that you can tell what it is for when you inevitably forget later. [At least, I inevitably forget.] 1. Start with basics Place named nodes and draw lines between them: ode (a) at (1,5) {$A$}; ode (b) at (2,3) {$B$}; \draw (a) -- (b); This way you can make any simple graph, you just need to get your coordinates right (at this point, it is better to make a quick drawing on paper first, and get the coordinates this way) 2. Improve style as you need Tikz has many styling functions, for line width, colors, etc.

Some more useful than others. Look for anything you think would improve the drawing, and you'll find it. You'll remember the most useful ones quickly. 3. Improve your code to make it more efficient Don't want to give exact numbers for coordinates? There are many ways to achieve relative placement! Learn about .north, .south placement, or use calculations in coordinates. You use copy-paste too much for your own taste? Learn about styles, macros, use scopes or the most-powerfull \foreach loops.Learn how to make overlays painlessly using e.g. \only or \alt You'll end up having a much shorter code, much faster to write, so you can quickly make, say, a nice animation of an algorithm running on a graph. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google Sign up using Email and Password Post as a guest By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service. Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged tikz-pgf beamer or ask your own question.