How to draw an empty plot?

Question

I need to make an empty plot. This is the best could I come up with.

plot(0, xaxt = 'n', yaxt = 'n', bty = 'n', pch = '', ylab = '', xlab = '')

Any simpler solutions?

P.S.: completely empty, no axis etc.

score 127 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 21 '12 at 19:30

127

How about something like:

plot.new()

edited Aug 21 '12 at 19:30

Penz

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answered Jan 24 '11 at 18:39

Joshua Ulrich

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@Adam `x11()` is a cross-platform R command to open a new device. If you have a device open and call `plot.new()`, the current device will be cleared. – Joshua Ulrich Jan 24 '11 at 18:57
1

Is there an advantage to `x11()` over `dev.new()`? My instinct is to go with the latter to accommodate whatever the local default device is, but I'm not certain that's how things work. – Matt Parker Jan 24 '11 at 19:30
@Matt: I use `x11()` due to habit. I'm no expert on plotting in R but after glancing at the documentation, `dev.new()` would probably be better. – Joshua Ulrich Jan 24 '11 at 19:38
@Matt & Joshua, plot.new() is better for my needs. I wanted the empty plot to serve as filler in a multiplot (mfrow) plot. dev.new() doesn't work in this case. – Adam SO Jan 24 '11 at 19:45
Ah, now I see - thought you needed to call a dev.new() before plot.new(), but that's unnecessary. Subtle differences - it's nice to know about both. – Matt Parker Jan 24 '11 at 20:42

score 88 · Answer 2 · answered May 01 '14 at 13:50

88

I suggest that someone needs to make empty plot in order to add some graphics on it later. So, using

plot(1, type="n", xlab="", ylab="", xlim=c(0, 10), ylim=c(0, 10))

you can specify the axes limits of your graphic.

answered May 01 '14 at 13:50

stukselbax

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Mehrad Mahmoudian · Answer 3 · 2023-03-14T12:04:40.177

The following does not plot anything in the plot and it will remain empty.

plot(NULL, xlim=c(0,1), ylim=c(0,1), ylab="y label", xlab="x lablel")

Which will produce:

This is useful when you want to add lines or dots afterwards within a for loop or something similar. Just remember to change the xlim and ylim values based on the data you want to plot.

As a side note: This can also be used for Boxplot, Violin plots and swarm plots. for those remember to add add = TRUE to their plotting function and also specify at = to specify on which number you want to plot them (default is x axis unless you have set horz = TRUE in these functions.

If you want to trigger a new plot, for example when you are using layout(), you are better off with plot.new(). For example in the following we are adding empty plots to either side of the first row to add some padding:

layout(mat = matrix(c(1,2,2,3,
                      4,4,5,5),
                    nrow = 2,
                    byrow = TRUE))
plot.new()
plot(iris[, 1:2])
plot.new()
plot(iris[, 1:2])
plot(iris[, 1:2])

In this plot I have manually annotated the regions to clarify what I mean:

And the following is what you actually get:

score 28 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 01 '14 at 23:32

28

This is marginally simpler than your original solution:

plot(0,type='n',axes=FALSE,ann=FALSE)

answered Jun 01 '14 at 23:32

Ben Bolker

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No need to add `ann=FALSE`, will anyway be an empty area. But a great solution, thanks! – MS Berends Jun 14 '19 at 14:05

score 17 · Answer 5 · edited Jan 23 '15 at 16:41

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Adam, following your comment above ("I wanted the empty plot to serve as filler in a multiplot (mfrow) plot."), what you actually want is the mfg option

    par(mfg=c(row,column))

- which controls where you want to put the next plot. For instance, to put a plot in the middle of a 3x3 multiplot, do

    par(mfrow=c(3,3))
    par(mfg=c(2,2))
    plot(rnorm(10))

edited Jan 23 '15 at 16:41

pbnelson

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answered Oct 10 '12 at 09:13

Dag Hjermann

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why.knot · Answer 6 · 2016-10-06T05:21:48.763

15

You need a new plot window, and also a coordinate system, so you need plot.new() and plot.window(), then you can start to add graph elements:

plot.new( )
plot.window( xlim=c(-5,5), ylim=c(-5,5) )

points( rnorm(100), rnorm(100) )
axis( side=1 )

example plot

edited Oct 06 '16 at 05:21

answered Oct 06 '16 at 04:58

why.knot

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score 4 · Answer 7 · answered Feb 28 '13 at 12:21

4

There is an interest in your solution that plot.new() hasn't though: in the empty plot you "draw" you can write text at specified coordinates with text(x = ..., y = ..., your_text).

answered Feb 28 '13 at 12:21

Dotoma

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score 2 · Answer 8 · answered Jan 25 '11 at 05:52

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grid.newpage() ## If you're using ggplot

grid() ## If you just want to activate the device.

answered Jan 25 '11 at 05:52

Brandon Bertelsen

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`grid()` is unrelated to the grid package AFAIK – baptiste Jun 01 '14 at 23:36

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Jul 03 '18 at 18:10

1

An empty plot with some texts which are set position.

plot(1:10, 1:10,xaxt="n",yaxt="n",bty="n",pch="",ylab="",xlab="", main="", sub="")
mtext("eee", side = 3, line = -0.3, adj = 0.5)
text(5, 10.4, "ddd")
text(5, 7, "ccc")

answered Jul 03 '18 at 18:10

Nick Dong

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Why add text? What does that have to do with "How to create an empty plot?". Overall, this seems more complicated than OP's method in the question, `plot(0,xaxt='n',yaxt='n',bty='n',pch='',ylab='',xlab='')`, since you add `main = "", sub = ""` even you get the same result without them. – Gregor Thomas Jul 03 '18 at 18:25

score 1 · Answer 10 · answered Mar 18 '19 at 01:41

If anyone is looking for a ggplot2 solution, you can use either cowplot or patchwork packages

library(ggplot2)

### examples from cowplot vignettes
plot.mpg <- ggplot(mpg, aes(x = cty, y = hwy, colour = factor(cyl))) +
  geom_point(size = 2.5)
plot.diamonds <- ggplot(diamonds, aes(clarity, fill = cut)) + 
  geom_bar() +
  theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 0, vjust = 0.5))

library(cowplot)
### use NULL
plot_grid(plot.mpg, NULL, NULL, plot.diamonds,
  labels = c("A", "B", "C", "D"),
  ncol = 2
)

# Note: if you want to initialize an empty drawing canvas, use ggdraw()

library(patchwork)
### use plot_spacer()
plot.mpg + plot_spacer() + plot_spacer() + plot.diamonds +
  plot_layout(ncol = 2) +
  plot_annotation(
    title = "Plot title",
    subtitle = "Plot subtitle",
    tag_levels = "A",
    tag_suffix = ")"
  )

^{Created on 2019-03-17 by the reprex package (v0.2.1.9000)}

score 1 · Answer 11 · answered Aug 21 '22 at 17:54

1

Another simple ggplot2 option is using geom_blank like this:

library(ggplot2)
ggplot() +
  geom_blank()

^{Created on 2022-08-21 with reprex v2.0.2}

As you can see the plot is blank.

answered Aug 21 '22 at 17:54

Quinten

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How to draw an empty plot?

11 Answers11