From our previous subsection on SmartDiagram, we now move onto a more complex topic: the TikZ package. In this first part we plan on covering how to draw simple things and how to put them together to make something look nice. If you're looking to draw more difficult things, then the second part on TikZ will be able to give you more ideas of what you can build with this package.

Now we will cover the very basics of the package:

First of all TikZ has a path syntax with its commands that acts like this: \path[<Options>]specification;.

Most common Path Actions:

• \draw: draws a given argument
• \fill: fills a given argument with a color
• \filldraw: draws the border of a given argument and fills it with a color
• \shade: fills a given argument with a smooth transition from one color to another

Note that inside the environment tikzpicture all of these command lines are a shortcut for \path[command].

With that said, you can give single orders to TikZ by using the command line \tikz following it up with another TikZ command.
For example following drawing yields the following result:

But what exactly did we do?
Firstly, we used the TikZ package with \usepackage{tikz}, then we used the \tikz command line to introduce our \draw command and we specified the coordinates from which the line should start and to where it should arrive. These coordinates work like (x,y) on a Cartesian plane and as long as -- is present in between you can keep drawing from point to point until you choose that you have drawn enough random lines. Likewise we can draw curved lines introducing the controls command which must be separated by two dots:.. and given the coordinates of the control points makes that coordinate behave like a "center of gravity" which pulls the line towards it:

Control points must be separated by and when we want more than one to have effect on our \draw. The other way to draw with TikZ is to begin the tikzpicture environment through the \begin{tikzpicture} command line and it's the one we're going to keep using since it's required to make more complex images. Other than that there are a number of options you can insert in your \draw command to modify the behaviour of your line:

Geometric options:

• rotate= angle in degree: rotates the argument by the given angle
• xshift= length: shifts the argument by the given horizontal length
• yshift= length: shifts the argument by the given vertical length
• scale= factor: rescales the argument by the given factor
• xscale= factor: rescales the x coordinates of the argument by the given factor
• yscale= factor: rescales the y coordinates of the argument by the given factor

Color options:

• color= color name: colors the argument with the given color
• opacity= factor: determines the opacity of the given color

Line width options:

• line width= dimension: determines the width of the line

Line end options:

• line cap= type: round, rect, butt: applies one of the 3 types to the argument
• rounded corners: makes the corners round by a default size
• rounded corners= size: makes the corner round by the given size
• line join= type: round, bevel, miter: applies one of the 3 types to the argument

Line pattern options:

• dash pattern= dash pattern: determines a custom dash pattern (for example dash pattern= on 2pt off 3pt on 4pt off 5pt)
• solid
• dashed
• dotted
• dashdotted
• densely dotted
• loosely dotted
• double

Let us now try to make use of some of these options to draw the coolest line to be ever drawn:

We're going to cover the \fill, \filldraw,\shade commands as well as the options to draw rectangles, circles, grids and arcs in this subsection of TikZ. Let us first start by drawing a grid and from there we will implement all the above described commands. The step option is needed to specify the step of the grid.

After having drawn our initial grid giving the starting coordinates, the step and the ending coordinates we can start using the commands \fill and rectangle to see how they behave.

Highlighted in bold we can now see what has changed since our last step. We have used the \fill command to fill the given rectangle area going from (-2,2) to (-4,4) Next up we're going to see how \filldraw and circle behave, but they are really not much different from what we've already seen.

\filldraw behaves essentially the same as fill except that it takes the draw option for the border of the argument given, and circle takes the coordinates of the center and the length of its radius. Now that we've seen these things in action let's move onto two slightly trickier command and option: \shade and arc.

Now we can see how \shade works. It takes the direction from which the color shades into the other (this also includes top, bottom, inner and outer color options). While arc takes the origin of the angle, the coordinates of the points where it spreads to and the width of the angle along with its size.

The next Graphics subsection will be teaching you how to start out with drawing charts, it's bound to become more complex but we are going to use what we've learnt on this initial part while adding commands which are going to become gradually harder but better. You should expect to be able to draw your own chart or graph after having read both TikZ subsections.