area function

Specify a plotting area in a layout

This is a small helper used to specify a single area in a rectangular grid that should contain a plot. Objects constructed with area() can be concatenated together with c() in order to specify multiple areas.

area(t, l, b = t, r = l)

Arguments

• t, b: The top and bottom bounds of the area in the grid
• l, r: The left and right bounds of the area int the grid

Returns

A patch_area object

Details

The grid that the areas are specified in reference to enumerate rows from top to bottom, and coloumns from left to right. This means that t and l

should always be less or equal to b and r respectively. Instead of specifying area placement with a combination of area() calls, it is possible to instead pass in a single string

areas <- c(area(1, 1, 2, 1),
      area(2, 3, 3, 3))

is equivalent to

areas < -"A##
     A#B
     ##B"

For an example of this, see the plot_layout() examples.

Examples

library(ggplot2)

p1 <- ggplot(mtcars) + geom_point(aes(mpg, disp))
p2 <- ggplot(mtcars) + geom_boxplot(aes(gear, disp, group = gear))
p3 <- ggplot(mtcars) + geom_bar(aes(gear)) + facet_wrap(~cyl)

layout <- c(
  area(1, 1),
  area(1, 3, 3),
  area(3, 1, 3, 2)
)

# Show the layout to make sure it looks as it should
plot(layout)

# Apply it to a patchwork
p1 + p2 + p3 + plot_layout(design = layout)