Charts and drawings in LaTeX: pgfplots and TikZ

Charts and drawings work in Scissor LaTeX: it draws pgfplots and TikZ pictures itself, for a large common subset, so a tikzpicture typesets in the browser like any other part of the document.

How charts work here

A TeX installation runs the pgfplots and TikZ packages, which are large programs written in TeX. Scissor LaTeX has no TeX inside, so its typesetter reads the picture code itself and draws the lines, marks, axes and labels directly. Most everyday plots and diagrams come out as you would expect. An option it does not know yet is skipped, and the Problems tab names it, so the rest of the picture still appears.

Start with pgfplots basics for plots, or Drawings with TikZ for diagrams. The package pages list every supported feature: pgfplots and TikZ.

Pages in this section

• pgfplots basics: plots in LaTeX with examplesLoad pgfplots, open a tikzpicture with an axis inside, and add each data series with \addplot, either as a list of coordinates or as a formula.
• Line plots with pgfplotsAdd one \addplot per line inside an axis; style each with options such as red, dashed, thick or mark=square*, or let the cycle list choose a style for you.
• Scatter plots with pgfplotsAdd only marks to an \addplot in a pgfplots axis, so the points are drawn without lines; choose the shape with mark= and read the points from coordinates or a table.
• Bar charts with pgfplotsAdd ybar (vertical bars) or xbar (horizontal bars) to a pgfplots axis, name the categories with symbolic x coords, and give each series as an \addplot with coordinates.
• Error bars with pgfplotsAdd error bars/.cd, y dir=both, y explicit to the \addplot options and write each error after its point as +- (0, error), or read the errors from a table column with y error=.
• Logarithmic axes with pgfplotsReplace axis with semilogyaxis (log y), semilogxaxis (log x) or loglogaxis (both), or set ymode=log or xmode=log on a normal axis.
• Several plots in a grid with groupplotsLoad the groupplots library, open a groupplot environment with group style={group size=2 by 1}, and start each plot with \nextgroupplot.
• Contours, heat maps and colour mapsUse \addplot3 in an axis with view={0}{90}: surf or matrix plot for a heat map, contour filled for filled contours, and add colorbar and a colormap for the scale.
• Plotting data from a CSV fileAdd the file to your project and write \addplot table[x=col1, y=col2, col sep=comma] {file.csv}; inside a pgfplots axis.
• Drawings with TikZInside a tikzpicture, write path commands such as \draw (0,0) -- (2,1);, \draw (1,1) circle (0.5); or \fill[blue] (0,0) rectangle (1,1);, each ending with a semicolon.
• TikZ nodes, arrows and diagramsPlace each box with \node[draw] (name) {text};, position the next ones with the positioning library (right=of name), and connect them with \draw[->] (a) -- (b);.