Gantt chart with multiple titles but bars between them

Question

Community,

I'd like to make a work plan for my PhD project. The goal would be to have "Year 1" as a title, then some tasks, directly below the last task of year 1 there should be the title "Year 2" and then the tasks etc.

This is what I've written so far:

\documentclass[a4paper, 11pt]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{amsmath,amssymb,amstext}
\usepackage[english, ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage[hmargin=2.5cm,vmargin=2.5cm]{geometry}
\usepackage[dvipsnames]{xcolor}
\setitemize{leftmargin=*}
\usepackage{pgfgantt}
\begin{document}
\begin{ganttchart}[
x unit=0.8cm,
y unit title=0.8cm,
y unit chart=0.6cm,
vgrid,
hgrid,
bar/.append style={fill=MidnightBlue},
milestone/.append style={fill=SkyBlue, rounded corners=3pt}]{1}{12}
\gantttitle{\textbf{YEAR 1}: Entry Phase}{12} \\
\gantttitlelist{1,...,12}{1} \\
\ganttbar{Literature: research and review}{1}{7} \\
\ganttbar{Writing of exposé}{4}{6} \\
\ganttmilestone{Public presentation}{7} \\
\ganttbar{Adaption of experiment 1}{11}{12} \\
\ganttbar{Conference participation $\&$ networking}{11}{12}\\

THIS IS WHERE I RUN INTO PROBLEMS:

\gantttitle{\textbf{YEAR 2}: Research Phase}{12} \\
\gantttitlelist{1,...,12}{1} \\
\ganttbar{Experiment 1: conduction}{1}{2} \\
\ganttbar{Planning of experiment 2}{3}{4} \\
\ganttbar{Organizing a workshop}{9}{11} \\
\ganttmilestone{Workshop}{11}
\end{ganttchart}

The bars start before the title 2 in the chart, which looks really weird. Is there a solution to this or do I have to make to separate gantt charts?

Thank you for your help!

Best, Lisa

Torbjørn T. · Answer 1 · 2018-01-10T22:18:23.083

The vertical position of the title depends, in part, on the value of the TeX counter \gtt@currentline. If you add 1 to that counter before the second title, and then subtract 2 from it afterwards, the diagram looks better. You can do that addition by

\makeatletter
\advance\gtt@currentline by 1
\makeatother

and similarly \advance\gtt@currentline by -2 for the subtraction. See What do \makeatletter and \makeatother do? for an explanation of \makeatletter/\makeatother.

I don't know pgfgantt that well, so there might be better ways of getting a frame around the descriptions as well, but I show one method in the code below, where the frame is drawn manually.

The whole chart is actually a bit wider than the text block as it is, so I also added a line break in the Conference participation \& networking label. In order to be able to use \\ for a line break, I added align=right to the bar label node style.

\documentclass[a4paper, 11pt]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{amsmath,amssymb} % amsmath loads amstext
\usepackage[english, ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage[hmargin=2.5cm,vmargin=2.5cm]{geometry}
\usepackage[dvipsnames]{xcolor}
%\setitemize{leftmargin=*}
\usepackage{pgfgantt}
\begin{document}
\begin{center}
\begin{tikzpicture} % added
\begin{ganttchart}[
  x unit=0.8cm,
  y unit title=0.8cm,
  y unit chart=0.6cm,
  vgrid,
  hgrid,
  bar/.append style={fill=MidnightBlue},
  milestone/.append style={fill=SkyBlue, rounded corners=3pt},
  bar label font=\footnotesize, % reduce font size
  milestone label font=\footnotesize\itshape, % reduce font size
  bar label node/.append style={align=right}, % allows for line breaks with \\ in the labels
  milestone label node/.append style={align=right}, % allows for line breaks with \\ in the labels
  canvas/.append style={name=canvas} % to be able to use the canvas node as reference for drawing
]{1}{12}
    \gantttitle{\textbf{YEAR 1}: Entry Phase}{12} \\
    \gantttitlelist{1,...,12}{1} \\
    \ganttbar{Literature: research and review}{1}{7} \\
    \ganttbar{Writing of exposé}{4}{6} \\
    \ganttmilestone{Public presentation}{7} \\
    \ganttbar{Adaption of experiment 1}{11}{12} \\
    \ganttbar{Conference participation\\\& networking}{11}{12}\\ % <- added a linebreak in the label text
    \makeatletter
    \advance\gtt@currentline by 1
    \makeatother
    \gantttitle{\textbf{YEAR 2}: Research Phase}{12} \\
    \gantttitlelist{1,...,12}{1} \\
    \makeatletter
    \advance\gtt@currentline by -2
    \makeatother
    \ganttbar{Experiment 1: conduction}{1}{2} \\
    \ganttbar{Planning of experiment 2}{3}{4} \\
    \ganttbar{Organizing a workshop}{9}{11} \\
    \ganttmilestone{Workshop}{11}
\end{ganttchart}

% draw frame around the labels on the left
\draw [/pgfgantt/canvas,fill=none]
 ([yshift=-0.5\pgflinewidth]canvas.north west) -- 
 (canvas.north west -| current bounding box.west) |- 
 ([yshift=0.5\pgflinewidth]canvas.south west);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{center}

\end{document}

Thank you very much. That helped a lot! Is there also a possibility to extend the frame to the task description on the left side? Otherwise it looks a bit like its flushed right. — Fraeulein Nux, Jan 10 '18 at 21:44
Thanks that worked perfectly! One last question, then I'll be very happy. Can I extend the title (e.g. YEAR 1) also to the entire (frame)? So that the title is not only in the center above the bars, but also the task desciptions? — Fraeulein Nux, Jan 11 '18 at 08:29
@FraeuleinNux I don't know, I suggest you ask a new question specifically about that problem. — Torbjørn T., Jan 11 '18 at 08:50

Gantt chart with multiple titles but bars between them

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