How do I decouple child nodes in tikz trees into separate node elements?

Question

Assume I have a tree of the following form:

\node (r) {Root}
  child { node (c1) {Left Child} }
  child { node (c2) {Right Child} }
  ;

Now, I want to put this into a beamer frame and apply \only and \uncover to individual \node; elements. But if I have one huge tree, I cannot do that. So is there a way to decouple the child nodes, and refer to the parent node by name?

Can you please make a minimal working example (MWE)? And could you also include a sketch of what the result should look like? — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Aug 22 '18 at 20:02
It would give the people willing to help you something to start with when they work on a solution for you. — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Aug 22 '18 at 20:13
Because then one could give a better answer. Just load the \usetikzlibrary{overlay-beamer-styles} library and try \node (r) {Root} child { node[visible on=<2->] (c1) {Left Child} } child { node[visible on=<3->] (c2) {Right Child} } ; No guarantee that it works because there is no MWE to play with, as already explained by @samcarter. (@samcarter I need to take off and have no interest in answering this question, but will be happy to use my remaining upvote for today for your answer. ;-) — , Aug 22 '18 at 20:14
@marmot Thanks for the offer! In the mean time the OP found an answer him/herself. — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Aug 22 '18 at 20:25
@marmot The question was about how to decouple nodes. The \uncover was a motivation why I need to uncover them. Your visible on trick doesn't work, because it doesn't hide the arrows between the nodes, only the node itself. — bitmask, Aug 22 '18 at 20:42
@bitmask Maybe you could answer https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/436389/overlay-of-edges-of-a-tree-created-with-one-command ? — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Aug 22 '18 at 20:53
Oh yes, it seems that asks for something very similar. I'll give it a go. — bitmask, Aug 22 '18 at 20:56

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 22 '18 at 20:20

The solution is quite simple, one can leave empty childs and then reference them in a separate node:

\node (r) {Root}
  child 
  child 
  ;
\node (c1) at (r-1) {Left Child};
\node (c2) at (r-2) {Right Child};

The syntax is basically appending -1, -2, etc to the parent node's identifier.

Child nodes can also be named:

\node (r) {Root}
  child {coordinate (left)}
  child {coordinate {right)}
  ;
\node (c1) at (left) {Left Child};
\node (c2) at (right) {Right Child};

How do I decouple child nodes in tikz trees into separate node elements?

1 Answers1

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