How to make a “box” in the sense of “see Box 1”?

Question

Biology papers often have explanations of key points in "boxes", which are typeset like figures, i.e. they are floating, but they are not numbered as figures and they usually have a frame around them or a shaded background. I would like to achieve the same effect in a LaTeX document.

That is, I would like to have a floating element in my document that is similar to a figure in that it consists of an image an a caption, but:

• there should be some title text (so the layout is title, then figure, then caption text)
• it should have a frame drawn around the whole thing (i.e. around the title, figure and the caption)
• it should not say "Figure 1" in front of the caption
• it should not affect the numbering of subsequent figures
• it should look as unobtrusive as possible, since it's not strictly part of the format for the conference I'm submitting to. So just a plain frame is preferred, without colour, shading, rounded corners etc.

For bonus points, it would be nice to automatically number these as "Box 1", "Box 2" and so on, though I don't strictly need that since my document only has one box.

I can find solutions to each of these things individually and could cobble them all together, but that feels like a bit of a hack and it would be good to have a clean solution.

Answer 1

Use tcolorbox.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{tcolorbox}
\usepackage{blindtext}

\newtcolorbox[auto counter]{mybox}[2][]{float,title={Box~\thetcbcounter: #2},#1}

\begin{document}

\blindtext

\begin{mybox}[floatplacement=t,label={box:first}]{My Box}
  Lorem ipsum
\end{mybox}

\begin{mybox}[floatplacement=b,label={box:second}]{My Box}
  Dolor sit amet
\end{mybox}

\blindtext

For more info see Boxes~\ref{box:first} and~\ref{box:second}.

\end{document}