Can I use the circuitikz tripole shapes without loading the complete circuitikz package?

Question

I'm using the tikz circuit library for my drawings. But I just realized that I need Transistors. These exist for circuitikz, but not in the tikz library. Is there a way to only use the circuitikz shapes without loading the complete circuitikz package?

The problem is that I already have existing drawings, done with the tikz library, and circuitikz is creating conflicts if used in the same document (related:Does a workaround or solution exists for the label conflict of circuitikz and TikZ?). I would like to avoid redrawing the circuits done with the tikz circuit library.

For example this code would break:

\documentclass[tikz]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{circuits.ee.IEC}
\usetikzlibrary{positioning}

\usepackage{circuitikz}
\begin{document}

    \begin{tikzpicture}[circuit ee IEC]

        \draw (0,0) to [diode={name=LED}] (0,2);
        \node[right of=LED] {LED};
    \end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

Answer 1

Tripoles are normal TikZ nodes, and they are defined in pgfcirctripoles.sty.

You could try inputting only that file, but unfortunately it has several dependencies on other files from the CircuiTikZ distribution.

So yeah, if you want you can extract certain node shapes from that file, but then you'll have to dig around for the definitions of needed macros/keys. Long and boring.

Anyway, if the problem is just that CircuiTikZ redefines resistor (well, actually my resistor was there before there was a circuit library in TikZ ;) ) you could just edit this line

\tikzset{resistor/.style= {\circuitikzbasekey, /tikz/to path=\pgf@circ@resistor@path, l=#1}}

into

\tikzset{R/.style= {\circuitikzbasekey, /tikz/to path=\pgf@circ@resistor@path, l=#1}}

then remove this line

\tikzset{R/.style= {resistor = #1}}

(both from circuitikz1.code.tex), and then the syntax to[R] should work with no more overriting of TikZ's resistor.

Perhaps I will introduce a package option that does something of that sort in the next release.