Using beamer tools in tikz, without creating slides

Question

I want to create a tikz picture that makes usage of beamer commands such as \only<2>, thereby creating multiple pages and adding lines etc. only in the second page. I then later on want to include these pages in a presentation.

Currently, I'm doing that by using \documentclass{beamer}, and putting the tikzpicture inside a frame. However, this forces me to finish the presentation in this document: I need to specify frame title, and also footer, and presentation styles.

I would much rather just create the plain pictures here, include them in the other presentation using \begin{frame}{Foo} \includegraphics{...}\end{frame}. However, when I do that inside beamer, there is unnecessary white space around the tikzpictures. When I don't do it inside beamer, I cannot use the \only. What should I do?

%\documentclass[tikz]{standalone}
\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\begin{document}

\begin{frame}

\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis} 
\addplot[blue, thick] {x};
\only<2>{\addplot[blue, thick, dashed] {2*x};}
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{frame}

\end{document}

Answer 1

UPDATE: standalone and beamer and \only do work, just not with crop but with preview.

\documentclass[beamer,tikz,preview]{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
%\usetikzlibrary{overlay-beamer-styles} % for advanced overlay options
\pgfplotsset{compat=1.16}
\begin{document}
\begin{standaloneframe}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis} 
\addplot[blue, thick] {x};
\only<2>{
\addplot[blue, thick, dashed] {2*x};
}
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{standaloneframe}
\end{document}

This becomes much simpler and better IMHO when using overlay-beamer-styles.

\documentclass[beamer,tikz,preview]{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\usetikzlibrary{overlay-beamer-styles} % for advanced overlay options
\pgfplotsset{compat=1.16}
\begin{document}
\begin{standaloneframe}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis} 
\addplot[blue, thick] {x};
\addplot[blue, thick, dashed,visible on=<2>] {2*x};
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{standaloneframe}
\end{document}

OLD ANSWER (perhaps also useful for some applications, so I keep it for now): Maybe something like this? The role of beamers only is taken by \ifnum.

\documentclass[tikz]{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\pgfplotsset{compat=1.16}
\begin{document}
\foreach \X in {1,2}
{\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis} 
\addplot[blue, thick] {x};
\ifnum\X=2
\addplot[blue, thick, dashed] {2*x};
\fi
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}}
\end{document}

Of course, you can make much more elaborate examples. Just like in beamer presentations with \only, a multipage pdf is generated. Here, however, the figures are cropped at their bounding boxes.

Of course, in a real example you may want to make sure that the coordinates do not jump, e.g. with

\documentclass[tikz]{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\pgfplotsset{compat=1.16}
\begin{document}
\foreach \X in {1,2}
{\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis} 
\addplot[blue, thick] {x};
\ifnum\X=2
\addplot[blue, thick, dashed] {2*x};
\else
\addplot[blue, thick, dashed,opacity=0] {2*x};
\fi
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}}
\end{document}