# Simultanious use of relative positioning and “of” notation

A rather high node has a not so high node on its rigth side.

I like the positioning and sizes, but i want both node to share the same Y-Axis of their north border.

\tikzstyle{big}  =[rectangle, draw=blue, text centered, minimum height=60]
\tikzstyle{small}=[rectangle, draw=black, text centered, minimum width=60]

\begin{tikzpicture}

\node[big]   (l) {Left  High};
\node[small] (r) [right of = l, anchor = west] {Rigth  Low};

\end{tikzpicture}


Here is a brute force example where only the Y-Axis alignes the way i would like it.

\node[big]   (l) at (0,0) [anchor = north] {Left High};
\node[small] (r) at (3,0) [anchor = north] {Right Low};


My goal is to still use the [right of = l] notation and also use reference l.north somehow to set r.north = l.north.

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right of will position the node at a certain node distance from the other, by default using both the coordinate of their center; if you add anchor, you tell Tikz to refer to this coordinate to position the shape. Did you try \node[right of=l.north,anchor=north]? –  Lionel MANSUY Feb 4 '13 at 12:50

It's probably because you are using the positioning syntax with explicit at (coord) so that explicit coordinate wins over the positioning directive. Here are two examples

\documentclass[tikz]{standalone}
\usetikzlibrary{positioning}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[
big/.style={rectangle, draw=blue, text centered, minimum height=60},
small/.style={rectangle, draw=black, text centered, minimum width=60}
]

\node[big] (l) at (0,0) {Left High};
\node[small,right= 3 cm of {l.north},anchor=north] (r) {Right Low};
\node[big,anchor=north west] (r2) at (r.north east) {righter};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}


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