Creating stacked shapes for tikzstyle with

Question

I'm working on a diagram, and I'm exploring TikZ for doing it. I searched, and looks like there is no easy way of doing diagrams, like pgfplots for plotting.

So, I need to create some special node shape like this one:

However, when I try to set a fixed size for the rectangle in the tikzstyle the things get ugly. Moreover, I have no clue on how to set several rectangles in the same style. I tried moving them in the style with something like: \tikzstyle{rectangle(0,0,2,1), draw, rectangle(1,1,3,2),draw}, but obviously that doesn't work.

What I'm missing to define a style like the one in the picture?

Answer 1

Using the shadows library as follows. The idea is to use the preaction mecanism (the shadows library hides it behind the scene).

\documentclass[border=5mm]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{shadows}
\begin{document}
\tikzset{%
  cascaded/.style = {%
    general shadow = {%
      shadow scale = 1,
      shadow xshift = -1ex,
      shadow yshift = 1ex,
      draw,
      thick,
      fill = white},
    general shadow = {%
      shadow scale = 1,
      shadow xshift = -.5ex,
      shadow yshift = .5ex,
      draw,
      thick,
      fill = white},
    fill = white, 
    draw,
    thick,
    minimum width = 1.5cm,
    minimum height = 2cm}}
\begin{tikzpicture}
  \node[cascaded,label=below:Text] {};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Answer 2

The problem can be fixed by using a preaction/postaction style. These styles you can read about in the manual. Basically it takes the current path and does something to it.

What you then can do is:

\tikzset{add shifted/.style={%
    postaction={%
        transform canvas={%
            xshift=0.1cm,yshift=-0.1cm
        },draw,fill=white,#1%
    }%
}}

This will make a shifted drawing after (hence postaction), which is filled with white and drawn as specified.

You can also do it the other way around with preaction. I have here shown how it could be done with a couple of different techniques. Also you can toy with this and nodes, remember that nodes are also paths (rectangular paths if not specified).

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}
\tikzset{%
    my box/.style={draw,fill=white},
    % Shifted without need for correct middle coordinate
    add shifted/.style={%
        postaction={%
            transform canvas={%
                xshift=0.1cm,yshift=-0.1cm
            },my box,#1%
        }%
    },
    % Shifted with need for correct middle coordinate
    add left/.style={%
        preaction={%
            transform canvas={%
                xshift=-0.1cm,yshift=0.1cm
            },my box,#1%
        }%
    },
    add right/.style={%
        postaction={%
            transform canvas={%
                xshift=0.1cm,yshift=-0.1cm
            },my box,#1%
        }%
    },
    % Both left and right collected to one, with separate args.
    add lr/.style 2 args={add left={#1},add right={#2}},
    % A style which also adds text. (not so agile)
    add lr text/.style={add left,add right,postaction={%
            transform canvas={yshift=-0.5cm},
            path picture={%
                \node[anchor=south] at (path picture bounding box.south) {#1};%
            }%
        }%
    }
}
\begin{tikzpicture}
  \path[use as bounding box] (-0.5,-0.75) rectangle (8.5,2.5);
  \draw[my box,add shifted={add shifted=add shifted}] (0,0) rectangle ++(2,2);
  \node[below=6pt] at (1.25,0) {Text};
  \draw[my box,add lr={fill=brown}{fill=yellow}] (3,0) rectangle ++(2,2);
  \node[below] at (4,0) {Text};
  \draw[my box,add lr text=Text] (6,0) rectangle ++(2,2);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Which will output as:

You can of course adapt to your needs.

Notice that you can keep tweaking your styles until you basically only need to alter one input.

Answer 3

If you have to draw only very few of these, then, a little bit of manual labor solves the problem.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\tikzset{
    cascaded1/.style={draw,fill=white,minimum height=1.5cm,ultra thick,minimum width=1cm},
    cascaded0/.style={fill=white,minimum height=1.4cm,minimum width=0.9cm}
}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}

\foreach \x in {1,2,...,5}{
\pgfmathparse{int(mod(\x,2))}
\node[cascaded\pgfmathresult] (a\x) at (\x mm, -\x mm) {};
};
\node (text1) at([yshift=-5mm]a3.south) {\textsf{Text}};

\begin{scope}[xshift=2cm]
\foreach \x in {1,2,...,3}{
\node[cascaded1] (b\x) at (2*\x mm,-2*\x mm) {};
};
\node (text2) at([yshift=-4mm]b2.south) {\textsf{Text}};
\end{scope}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

The difference is the white filled nodes creating the void between rectangles in the example on the right or straightforward cascading. The boring part is the placement of text underneath but shouldn't be a problem.

Otherwise, you have to declare a new shape to use it as a node directly which requires some nontrivial coding. you can the use shadow library as shown in cjorssen's answer.