How to create a mindmap in Latex with hexagonal shapes? - latex

Question

I'm busting my head on creating a mindmap in LaTex/TikZ with nodes being displayed not as boxes, circles or ellipses. Is there a way to create a mindmap using hexagons as children? The children ought to be connected to the corners. Parents and children should contain a short text
I've tried using the shapes package.
Thank you in advance,
Pjotr

Answer 1

Altering the shapes of the child nodes is easy, you could simply use regular polygon, regular polygon sides=6 from the shapes library. However altering the connections between the root node and the hexagones is more difficult (at least for us mere mortals, tikz wizards can do it, see https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/514772/36296).
Instead you could emulate a mindmap with normal nodes:
\documentclass[margin=0.3cm]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{shapes}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\def\nchilds{5}
\node[fill=blue,text=white,circle,minimum size=3cm] at (0,0) (root) {Root};
\foreach \x [count=\xi] in {test1, test2, test3, test4, test5}{
\shade[left color=red,right color=blue,shading angle={(360/\nchilds*\xi)-90}]
({(360/\nchilds*\xi)+3}:3.2cm) to [in=160,out=10,relative]
({(360/\nchilds*\xi)+10}:1.45cm) -- ({(360/\nchilds*\xi)-10}:1.45cm) to [in=170,out=20,relative] ({(360/\nchilds*\xi)-3}:3.2cm);
\node[regular polygon, regular polygon sides=6,fill=red,minimum width=2cm,shape border uses incircle,shape border rotate=(360/\nchilds*\xi)] at (360/\nchilds*\xi:4cm) {\x};
}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}
(many thanks to #marmot for the hint about shape border rotate!)