In TikZ, is it possible to nest nodes?

Question

My use case: I am drawing chemical schemes. Each molecule contains several nodes. However, I also want to put each molecule into a "wrapper" node, so that I can use the usual anchors in combining the molecules into a reaction scheme. How can I achieve that, or something similar?

score 28 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 14 '17 at 13:50

You can abuse matrix nodes. Normal nodes do not let you put TikZ commands inside them (as they revert to text mode), but matrix nodes do. So you could just create a 1x1-matrix for every part. For example:

\begin{tikzpicture}
    \node[matrix] (A) {
        \draw (0,0) rectangle (1,1); 
        \node at (0.5,0.5) {A}; \\
    };
    \node[matrix,left of=A] (B) 
    {
        \draw (0.5,0.5) circle (0.5);
        \fill (0.5,0.5) circle (0.1); \\
    };
\end{tikzpicture}

score 20 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 24 '12 at 03:26

20

I did it by including a whole \begin{tikzpicture} ... \end{tikzpicture} in the content of each node.

Maybe not the most elegant way of doing it... but it works.

edited Dec 24 '12 at 03:26

hpesoj626

17,282

answered Aug 04 '10 at 11:56

André

309

1

Thanks! I underestimated the nesting ability of the environment. I now define the molecules as separate commands (using the tikzpicture environment internally), which are then referred to from the node content. – Svante Aug 04 '10 at 13:03
4

One reason not to use this method is that referring to nodes within the inner picture is problematic. A quick test showed that tikz does know about the inner nodes, but thinks that they're in different places to where they actually are. – Andrew Stacey Aug 04 '10 at 13:08
Yes, naturally. I do not need to refer to the inner nodes from the outside, though. Having an inner environment should however prevent name clashes. If you need to refer to inner nodes, the matrix solution seems to be the way to go. – Svante Aug 04 '10 at 13:17
8

@Svante: Actually, my experiments show that there is not a decent separation between "inner" and "outer" names. TikZ does not expect this nesting so there is no protection for node names. You can refer to inner nodes from the outer and outer nodes from the inner but it does not complain if you use the same nodenames inside and out and the positioning of inner nodes is not right when viewed from the outside. – Andrew Stacey Aug 04 '10 at 13:39
Oh, OK, then. :) – Svante Aug 04 '10 at 22:54
If you want to refer to nodes of the inner picture, you have to add the option remember picture to both, inner and outer picture. – Twonky Nov 07 '22 at 10:22

score 15 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 04 '10 at 12:05

Just some initial ideas:

Depending how complicated the "inner" part needs to be, one way to do this would be to make the molecules a "matrix" node (see the pgfmanual for details on how to use it). Another possibility to look in to is the "chain" library.

Another option would be to draw an invisible node at the centre of the molecule of the requisite size (draw it visibly first to get it the right size). The disadvantage of that is that you have to work out that size whereas it would be nice to get TikZ to do it by hand.

You could use the fit library to draw the "background" node. — Christian Wolf, Nov 13 '12 at 07:52

score 3 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

3

(This should be a comment to André's answer but sadly I am not allowed to do that.)

While the original question was asked earlier, there is a very similar question or even duplicate here that has an answer that uses remember picture to make a nested tikzpicture work properly. For me this worked while I had problems with using matrix.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

Community

1

answered Feb 12 '14 at 20:43

kjyv

721

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 26 '14 at 11:24

I don't think I saw this mentioned already - you can use \tikz\node to nest a node inside another one. Though, I'm not sure what outside variables/macros would be referable from the inside. Still, I use it to left-pad numbers with spaces ( given how we don't have a \printf{% 3d}{4} in Latex :) ):

/tmp/test02c.png

The code:

\documentclass[varwidth]{standalone}

\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{calc}

\pagecolor{yellow!15}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}

\newlength{\wtmp}
\setlength{\wtmp}{\widthof{589}}

% style: node left pad (for) number (padded with space)
\tikzstyle{nlpn} = [draw=none, align=right, inner sep=0pt, outer sep=0pt, minimum size=0pt, minimum width=\wtmp,text width=\wtmp]

% style for function:    
\tikzstyle{nlpnA} = [nlpn,draw]

% function to insert node:
\def\lpn#1{\tikz\node[nlpnA]{#1};} 

% place node - use function to place node inside
\node[draw] at (0,4) {[\lpn{64}/512/\lpn{0}]};

\tikzstyle{nlpnA} = [nlpn]
\node[draw] at (0,3) {[\lpn{64}/512/\lpn{0}]};

\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

You can use \phantom to create empty space the size of some text and precede it with \rlap to make that overlap the empty space. E.g. \rlap{text}\phantom{longer text}. Use \llap for overlapping from the other side, e.g. \phantom{longer text}\llap{text}. This works anywhere because these are TeX primitives. See also https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb22-4/tb72perlS.pdf — James C., Jan 17 '15 at 21:51

In TikZ, is it possible to nest nodes?

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