Is there the easiest way to toggle (show/hide) navigational grids in TikZ?

Question

In PSTricks, we can toggle the grids easily by showgrid=[false/true]. How to do it in TikZ? Doing as follows is tedious.

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{tikz}

\begin{document}


\tikzpicture

\draw[gray,very thin] (-4,-2) grid (4,2);
\foreach \x in {-4,...,4}
  \draw[red] (\x,-1.9) -- (\x,-2.1) node [below] {\x};


\foreach \y in {-2,...,2}
  \draw[red] (-3.9,\y) -- (-4.1,\y) node [right] {\y};

\draw (0,0) circle (2);


\endtikzpicture



\end{document}

Edit

The navigation needs not only the grids but also the labeling numbers.

Martin Scharrer · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-26T11:42:14.020

You could define a showgrid style (or better show grid to following the TikZ naming scheme) which executes some code at the end of the picture which draws the grid relative to the current bounding box.

Update: I now figured out that the backgrounds library already provides this as show background grid or as gridded. You might want to add tight background to not add extra space around your picture.

However adding the numbers requires extra code anyway. So here my final solution including numbers. The trick is to round to the next lower left and upper right corner on the grid using PGF code and then use a \foreach loop for the labeling.

Update 2: I added the requested options to select the positions of the labels. See the example code.

I converted it now to the format of a TikZ library which can be loaded using \usetikzlibrary{showgrid} and put it on my website.

Download: [ TikZ Library ] [ Example ]

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}
\usetikzlibrary{backgrounds}
\makeatletter
\newif\if@showgrid@grid
\newif\if@showgrid@left
\newif\if@showgrid@right
\newif\if@showgrid@below
\newif\if@showgrid@above
\tikzset{%
    every show grid/.style={},
    show grid/.style={execute at end picture={\@showgrid{grid=true,#1}}},%
    show grid/.default={true},
    show grid/.cd,
    labels/.style={font={\sffamily\small},help lines},
    xlabels/.style={},
    ylabels/.style={},
    keep bb/.code={\useasboundingbox (current bounding box.south west) rectangle (current bounding box.north west);},
    true/.style={left,below},
    false/.style={left=false,right=false,above=false,below=false,grid=false},
    none/.style={left=false,right=false,above=false,below=false},
    all/.style={left=true,right=true,above=true,below=true},
    grid/.is if=@showgrid@grid,
    left/.is if=@showgrid@left,
    right/.is if=@showgrid@right,
    below/.is if=@showgrid@below,
    above/.is if=@showgrid@above,
    false,
}

\def\@showgrid#1{%
    \begin{scope}[every show grid,show grid/.cd,#1]
    \if@showgrid@grid
    \begin{pgfonlayer}{background}
    \draw [help lines]
        (current bounding box.south west) grid
        (current bounding box.north east);
%
    \pgfpointxy{1}{1}%
    \edef\xs{\the\pgf@x}%
    \edef\ys{\the\pgf@y}%
    \pgfpointanchor{current bounding box}{south west}
    \edef\xa{\the\pgf@x}%
    \edef\ya{\the\pgf@y}%
    \pgfpointanchor{current bounding box}{north east}
    \edef\xb{\the\pgf@x}%
    \edef\yb{\the\pgf@y}%
    \pgfmathtruncatemacro\xbeg{ceil(\xa/\xs)}
    \pgfmathtruncatemacro\xend{floor(\xb/\xs)}
    \if@showgrid@below
    \foreach \X in {\xbeg,...,\xend} {
        \node [below,show grid/labels,show grid/xlabels] at (\X,\ya) {\X};
    }
    \fi
    \if@showgrid@above
    \foreach \X in {\xbeg,...,\xend} {
        \node [above,show grid/labels,show grid/xlabels] at (\X,\yb) {\X};
    }
    \fi
    \pgfmathtruncatemacro\ybeg{ceil(\ya/\ys)}
    \pgfmathtruncatemacro\yend{floor(\yb/\ys)}
    \if@showgrid@left
    \foreach \Y in {\ybeg,...,\yend} {
        \node [left,show grid/labels,show grid/ylabels] at (\xa,\Y) {\Y};
    }
    \fi
    \if@showgrid@right
    \foreach \Y in {\ybeg,...,\yend} {
        \node [right,show grid/labels,show grid/ylabels] at (\xb,\Y) {\Y};
    }
    \fi
    \end{pgfonlayer}
    \fi
    \end{scope}
}
\makeatother
%\tikzset{showgrid} % would enable it globally
\tikzset{every show grid/.style={show grid/keep bb}}%  Keep the original bounding box!
\begin{document}
\noindent
\begin{tikzpicture}
    \draw (3,2) -- +(45:3);
\end{tikzpicture}
\hspace{1cm}%
\begin{tikzpicture}[show grid=false]
    \draw (3,2) -- +(45:3);
\end{tikzpicture}
\hspace{1cm}%
\begin{tikzpicture}[show grid]
    \draw (3,2) -- +(45:3);
\end{tikzpicture}
\hspace{1cm}%
\begin{tikzpicture}[show grid=true]
    \draw (3,2) -- +(45:3);
\end{tikzpicture}
\par\bigskip\bigskip\bigskip\noindent
\begin{tikzpicture}[show grid=left]
    \draw (3,2) -- +(45:3);
\end{tikzpicture}
\hspace{1cm}%
\begin{tikzpicture}[show grid=right]
    \draw (3,2) -- +(45:3);
\end{tikzpicture}
\hspace{1cm}%
\begin{tikzpicture}[show grid=above]
    \draw (3,2) -- +(45:3);
\end{tikzpicture}
\hspace{1cm}%
\begin{tikzpicture}[show grid=below]
    \draw (3,2) -- +(45:3);
\end{tikzpicture}
\par\bigskip\bigskip\bigskip\noindent
\begin{tikzpicture}[show grid={left,right}]
    \draw (3,2) -- +(45:3);
\end{tikzpicture}
\hspace{1cm}%
\begin{tikzpicture}[show grid={right,above}]
    \draw (3,2) -- +(45:3);
\end{tikzpicture}
\hspace{1cm}%
\begin{tikzpicture}[show grid={above,below}]
    \draw (3,2) -- +(45:3);
\end{tikzpicture}
\hspace{1cm}%
\begin{tikzpicture}[show grid={below,right}]
    \draw (3,2) -- +(45:3);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Result:

Result

New:

Result

@xport: I'm working on it. This isn't easy and bugged me already since quite a while. — Martin Scharrer, Mar 25 '11 at 15:06
@xport: I'm actually planning to release all my PGF/TikZ improvements as a bundle (but not anytime soon). — Martin Scharrer, Mar 25 '11 at 15:58
@Martin: For the sake of completeness, give us options to put the labeling numbers whether top, bottom, right, left, etc. — Display Name, Mar 25 '11 at 16:00
@Martin: When will your library be available for the Miktex updater? Because I want to update my installed (La)TeX system using the Miktex updater. — Display Name, Mar 28 '11 at 03:18
@xport: I didn't had any plans yet when/how to release it. Like I said I want to bundle it with some other PGF/TikZ improvements of mine and still have to find the right format. — Martin Scharrer, Mar 28 '11 at 03:21
@MartinScharrer The links to your library don't work anymore. Perhaps you could update it. — student, Jul 14 '16 at 14:45
@student: Which error do you get and which version of TikZ/PGF are you using? — Martin Scharrer, Jul 19 '16 at 18:56
@MartinScharrer I am talking just about the html-hyperlinks in your answer, for example: http://latex.scharrer-online.de/general/wiki/showgrid seems to be down. Same problem for the other two links. So I just wanted to ask if you could update the links for other readers... Or did you publish the library in the meantime in another package? — student, Jul 20 '16 at 11:38
@student: Sorry, didn't understood you right the first time. Yes, I'm having issues with me website I will hopefully fix soon. — Martin Scharrer, Jul 21 '16 at 18:34

score 9 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 25 '11 at 10:32

There doesn't appear to be an every grid/.style={} option, so what you could do is define a new style to put on each grid which you can then toggle in the preamble. Something like:

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}
\tikzset{grid/.style={gray,very thin,opacity=1}}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\draw[grid] (0,0) grid (4,4);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Then changing the opacity to 0 effectively removes the grid. I chose to implement it by changing the opacity rather than the draw colour as if it is drawn in the background colour then this will still draw over anything already existing, whereas making it fully transparent shows through anything underneath.

One could easily make this in to a command or an \if to be executed, maybe toggle it with the draft option, but just changing a 1 to a 0 seems simple enough to me!

+1 @Andrew: Thanks for the effort. But it does not show the labeling numbers. — Display Name, Mar 25 '11 at 14:40
@xport: Ah, I didn't realise that that was part of the spec (not being familiar with PSTricks). I see that Martin has - as usual! - written an entire package to do this! — Andrew Stacey, Mar 25 '11 at 19:17

Is there the easiest way to toggle (show/hide) navigational grids in TikZ?

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