# Drawing a particular part of flowchart in tikz?

This might be simple, but looks like a daunting task to me. The following is a portion of my flowchart roughly drawn in google drawing. The bubbles (actually dots) indicate that there is a continuation of frames. How do I draw this in tikz? The choice of blue color for the block shapes was arbitrary.

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Please try to include a MWE no matter how simple it is.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{calc,shapes.geometric}
\begin{document}
%
%
\begin{center}
\begin{tikzpicture}

\node[draw] (topnode) at (3,2) {Node A};
\node[draw] (botnode) at (3,-2) {Node B};
\foreach\x in {1,...,5}{
\node[draw,trapezium,trapezium left angle=120, trapezium right angle=60pt] (innernode\x)at (\x,0) {\x};
\draw (innernode\x) |- ($(innernode\x)!0.5!(topnode)$) -| (topnode);
\draw (innernode\x) |- ($(innernode\x)!0.5!(botnode)$) -| (botnode);
}

\end{tikzpicture}
\end{center}
%
%
\end{document}


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There are many options here; I used the matrix. I also didn't elaborate to much on the code below. For example, if you need to calculate the intersections between lines, you must use the intersections library. You can also look in the PGF manual, it has lots of examples.

\documentclass[tikz]{standalone}

\usetikzlibrary{matrix}
\usetikzlibrary{shapes.geometric}
\usepackage{mathtools,ellipsis}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[%
any/.style={%
draw,
shape=trapezium,
trapezium left angle=60, trapezium right angle=120pt,
fill=blue!50,
minimum size=0.5cm,
},
topper/.style={%
any,
shape=rectangle,
},
]

\matrix (somematrix) [%
matrix of nodes,
nodes=any,
column sep=0.5cm,
row sep=0.5cm,
]
{%
& |[topper] (n1)| Node A & & \\
|(n2)| Frame 1 & |(n3)| Frame 2 & |[draw=none,fill=none]| $\cdots$ & |(n4)| Frame N \\
& |[topper](n5)| Node B & & \\
};

\draw (n1) -- (n3) -- (n5)
(n2) |- ++(0,0.5) -| (n4)
(n2) |- ++(0,-0.5) -| (n4);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}


-
is " | [topper] (n1) | Node A " same as "\node [topper] (n1) {Node A}; " ?? –  dineshdileep Jun 5 '13 at 4:19
Also could you explain "(n2) |- ++(0,0.5) -| (n4)" ?? I am not getting that "++" part. –  dineshdileep Jun 5 '13 at 4:20
@dineshdileep regarding your first question: yes, it is the same. But since I said matrix of nodes in the matrix options I can avoid always saying \node. For the second question, it works as the following: takes node named n2, goes up (x=0, y=0.5), then goes right, and finally goes down to meet the n4 node. The explanation of |-, -|, --, ++ can be easily found in the PGF manual. –  cacamailg Jun 5 '13 at 12:12

After some fiddling around, I got my own code working (am the questioner)

\documentclass[tikz,border=5mm]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{calc,shapes.geometric}
\begin{document}
%
%

\tikzset{
block/.style = {rectangle, draw, fill=blue!20,
text width=5em, text centered, minimum height=4em},
data/.style = {draw,trapezium,trapezium left angle=70,trapezium right angle=-70,minimum height=3em,fill=blue!20}
}
%
%
\begin{tikzpicture}[]
\node [block] (nodeA) {Node A};
\matrix[
row sep=0.3cm,column sep=0.5cm, below of=spreadout] (framematrix) {
\node[data] (frame1){ Frame 1};&
\node[data] (frame2){ Frame 2};&
\node (dots1) {$\ldots$};&
\node (dots1) {$\ldots$};&
\node (dots1) {$\ldots$};&
\node[data] (frameN){ Frame N};\\
};