Sounds like you would've benefited from a couple of useful LyX features: * A critical and unfortunately very well hidden feature of LyX is "instant preview" (d

Sounds like you would've benefited from a couple of useful LyX features: * A critical and unfortunately very well hidden feature of LyX is "instant preview" (disabled by default, you have to enable it in preferences). This runs each individual equation through LaTeX so the equations you see are not some rough approximation of the PDF but very literally what you'll see. You can also manually make preview environments to wrap around ERTs like your TikZ diagrams. In both cases, when you actually edit the equation or ERT you'll still get the classic editor. Apart from that, it makes it feel like you're really editing the PDF directly. * Another useful well-hidden feature is math macros. These are a lot like LaTeX's \newcommand, except that in LyX a math macro has three parts: the command name (plus any arguments), what literal LaTeX should be output, and a visual approximation to show up in equations that you're editing. That means that if there's some command in a package that LyX doesn't recognise (e.g. \foo) then you can make your own name for it (e.g. \myfoo), map its real LaTeX to \foo and its LyX display to whatever LyX-recognised features look vaguely like the real thing and then use that macro in your equations. Admittedly, this does require more upfront effort than using the LaTeX package directly but I think the payoff can be worth it.