# Tikz fails creating an ellipse

I found that I cannot creating ellipse with Tikz 3.0.1a for the following example

\begin{tikzpicture}
\node(a) [ellipse,draw] {};
\end{tikzpicture}


with error message:

Package pgfkeys Error: I do not know the key '/tikz/ellipse' and I am going
to ignore it. Perhaps you misspelled it. \node(a) [ellipse,draw]


while the following code works well

\begin{tikzpicture}
\end{tikzpicture}


Do I miss something here?

• If you want an ellipse-shaped node, you need to load the tikz shapes.geometric library. Only circle, rectangle and coordinateare defined initially. see section 67 p 693 of the manual – BambOo Oct 12 '18 at 9:31
• @BambOo Would you be willing to turn this into a real answer? – marmot Oct 12 '18 at 18:54
• @marmot, will do – BambOo Oct 12 '18 at 22:24

If you want an ellipse-shaped node, you need to load tikz shapes.geometric library. Only circle, rectangle and coordinate are defined initially. See section 67 p 693 of the manual.

• \draw ... ellipse is an ellipse-shaped path not a node
• scaling tikzpictures can lead to great modifications in a graphic and should be done carefully
• the shapes library is provided in the latest versions of pgf-tikz for compatibility reasons, it has been superseded by the shapes.geometric and shapes.misc libraries.
• Very good and I upvote you, – Sebastiano Oct 12 '18 at 22:36
• Thank you. I accept your answer. I was trying to search in the manual but still could not the answer. Thank you – zhidayat Oct 13 '18 at 8:47
• @zhidayat, after some time it gets easier :) – BambOo Oct 13 '18 at 15:38

An easy and simple way to draw an ellipse is as follows:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\draw (0,0) ellipse (2.5cm and 1cm);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}


Another way is to do the following:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[xscale=2]
\draw (0,0) circle (3);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}


EDIT : This may possibly be closer to what you are asking.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{arrows}
\usetikzlibrary{shapes}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\tikzstyle{every node}=[thin, draw=black, ellipse, minimum width=10cm,minimum height=5cm,align=center]
\node (a) {};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

• Though what you propose allows to draw ellipses with tikz, this does not answer the OP's question. – BambOo Oct 12 '18 at 11:04