Set the height of the y-axis plot in grid.arrange, but not the entire plot area

Question

When using the mesh scheme, I ran into the following problem: I want all my panels (a, b, c) to be the same size, but since I removed the marks and marks from the panels a and b (to have only one x axis) the size of the graphics a and b is larger and equal to the size of the graph c + space for mark and mark c. I also can not use ggplot2::facet_grid , since I want to separately determine the limits of the y axis (for example, to 40 and b and c to 15). Below you can find a working example used to create this graph based on this post to align the graphs vertically, but I don’t know how to ensure the same height of each plot separately. Any pointers are welcome.

 library(ggplot2) library(gridExtra) # generate data data <- data.frame(values=c(runif(20,0,40),runif(40,0,15)),product=c(rep("a",20),rep("b",20),rep("c",20)),treat=c("e","f","g","h","i"),time=c(0,6,24,48)) my_labeller <- function(var, value){ value <- as.character(value) value <- c("a","b","c") return(value) } #subset data data_a <- data[1:20,] data_b <- data[21:40,] data_c <- data[41:60,] # Make plots for all parameters seperatly: p_a <- ggplot(data_a,fill = white, aes(x=as.numeric(as.character(time)),y=as.numeric(as.character(values)))) p_a <- p_a+ geom_point(aes(colour=treat,shape=treat),size=4) p_a <- p_a + geom_line(aes(colour=treat)) p_a <- p_a + theme(axis.ticks.x = element_line(colour = "grey"), axis.ticks.y =element_line(colour = "grey"), panel.background = element_rect(fill = "white"), panel.grid.major=element_blank(), panel.grid.minor=element_blank(), axis.line = element_line(colour = "grey"), axis.text.x = element_text(size = 15), axis.text.y = element_text(size = 15), axis.title.x = element_text(size =18), axis.title.y = element_text(size=18,angle=0), legend.text = element_text(size=15), legend.title = element_blank(), legend.position = "right" ) p_a <- p_a + scale_colour_manual(values = c("#FFFF55","#000000","#0000AA","#00AA00","#00AAAA"), breaks= c("e","f","g","h","i"), labels = c("e","f","g","h","i") ) p_a <- p_a + scale_shape_manual(values =c(15:18,8), breaks= c("e","f","g","h","i"), labels = c("e","f","g","h","i") ) p_a <- p_a + guides(color = guide_legend(nrow=5),size = 16) # p <- p+ guides(colour="legend",size="none",shape= "legend") p_a <- p_a + scale_x_continuous(breaks= c(0,6,24,48)) p_a <- p_a + xlab("Time (h)") + ylab(paste(data_a$product, "(mM)")) p_a <- p_a + ylim(0,40) print(p_a) p_b <- ggplot(data_b,fill = white, aes(x=as.numeric(as.character(time)),y=as.numeric(as.character(values)))) p_b <- p_b+ geom_point(aes(colour=treat,shape=treat),size=4) p_b <- p_b + geom_line(aes(colour=treat)) p_b <- p_b + theme(axis.ticks.x = element_line(colour = "grey"), axis.ticks.y =element_line(colour = "grey"), panel.background = element_rect(fill = "white"), panel.grid.major=element_blank(), panel.grid.minor=element_blank(), axis.line = element_line(colour = "grey"), axis.text.x = element_text(size = 15), axis.text.y = element_text(size = 15), axis.title.x = element_text(size =18), axis.title.y = element_text(size=18,angle=0), legend.text = element_text(size=15), legend.title = element_blank(), legend.position = "right" ) p_b <- p_b + scale_colour_manual(values = c("#FFFF55","#000000","#0000AA","#00AA00","#00AAAA"), breaks= c("e","f","g","h","i"), labels = c("e","f","g","h","i") ) p_b <- p_b + scale_shape_manual(values =c(15:18,8), breaks= c("e","f","g","h","i"), labels = c("e","f","g","h","i") ) p_b <- p_b + guides(color = guide_legend(nrow=5),size = 16) # p <- p+ guides(colour="legend",size="none",shape= "legend") p_b <- p_b + scale_x_continuous(breaks= c(0,6,24,48)) p_b <- p_b + xlab("Time (h)") + ylab(paste(data_b$product, "(mM)")) p_b <- p_b + ylim (0,15) print(p_b) p_c <- ggplot(data_c,fill = white, aes(x=as.numeric(as.character(time)),y=as.numeric(as.character(values)))) p_c <- p_c+ geom_point(aes(colour=treat,shape=treat),size=4) p_c <- p_c + geom_line(aes(colour=treat)) p_c <- p_c + theme(axis.ticks.x = element_line(colour = "grey"), axis.ticks.y =element_line(colour = "grey"), panel.background = element_rect(fill = "white"), panel.grid.major=element_blank(), panel.grid.minor=element_blank(), axis.line = element_line(colour = "grey"), axis.text.x = element_text(size = 15), axis.text.y = element_text(size = 15), axis.title.x = element_text(size =18), axis.title.y = element_text(size=18,angle=0), legend.text = element_text(size=15), legend.title = element_blank(), legend.position = "right" ) p_c <- p_c + scale_colour_manual(values = c("#FFFF55","#000000","#0000AA","#00AA00","#00AAAA"), breaks= c("e","f","g","h","i"), labels = c("e","f","g","h","i") ) p_c <- p_c + scale_shape_manual(values =c(15:18,8), breaks= c("e","f","g","h","i"), labels = c("e","f","g","h","i") ) p_c <- p_c + guides(color = guide_legend(nrow=5),size = 16) # p <- p+ guides(colour="legend",size="none",shape= "legend") p_c <- p_c + scale_x_continuous(breaks= c(0,6,24,48)) p_c <- p_c + xlab("Time (h)") + ylab(paste(data_c$product, "(mM)")) p_c <- p_c + ylim (0,15) print(p_c) # now remove space in between a and b and b and c p_a <- p_a + theme(plot.margin = rep(unit(0,"null"),4), panel.margin = unit(0,"null"), axis.ticks.length = unit(0,"null"), axis.ticks.margin = unit(0,"null")) + labs(x=NULL) + scale_x_discrete(breaks=NULL) + guides(fill=FALSE) p_b <- p_b + theme(plot.margin = rep(unit(0,"null"),4), panel.margin = unit(0,"null"), axis.ticks.length = unit(0,"null"), axis.ticks.margin = unit(0,"null")) + labs(x=NULL) + scale_x_discrete(breaks=NULL) + guides(fill=FALSE) p_c <- p_c + theme(plot.margin = rep(unit(0,"null"),4), panel.margin = unit(0,"null")) # arrange them (+ align) plots <- list(p_a,p_b,p_c) grobs <- list() widths <- list() for (i in 1:length(plots)){ grobs[[i]] <- ggplotGrob(plots[[i]]) widths[[i]] <- grobs[[i]]$widths[2:5] } maxwidth <- do.call(grid::unit.pmax, widths) for (i in 1:length(grobs)){ grobs[[i]]$widths[2:5] <- as.list(maxwidth) } do.call("grid.arrange", c(grobs, ncol = 1)) 

I am using R on linux. The output of my session.Info ():

 R version 3.1.1 (2014-07-10) Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit) locale: [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 LC_NUMERIC=C LC_TIME=C LC_COLLATE=C LC_MONETARY=C LC_MESSAGES=C LC_PAPER=C LC_NAME=C [9] LC_ADDRESS=C LC_TELEPHONE=C LC_MEASUREMENT=C LC_IDENTIFICATION=C attached base packages: [1] grid stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base other attached packages: [1] gridExtra_0.9.1 ggvis_0.4 fastmatch_1.0-4 dplyr_0.3.0.2 shiny_0.10.2.1 xlsx_0.5.7 xlsxjars_0.6.1 rJava_0.9-6 ggplot2_1.0.0 reshape2_1.4 gdata_2.13.3 loaded via a namespace (and not attached): [1] DBI_0.3.1 MASS_7.3-35 R6_2.0.1 RJSONIO_1.3-0 Rcpp_0.11.3 assertthat_0.1 colorspace_1.2-4 digest_0.6.4 gtable_0.1.2 gtools_3.4.1 [11] htmltools_0.2.6 httpuv_1.3.2 labeling_0.3 magrittr_1.0.1 mime_0.2 munsell_0.4.2 parallel_3.1.1 plyr_1.8.1 proto_0.3-10 scales_0.2.4 [21] stringr_0.6.2 tools_3.1.1 xtable_1.7-4 

Answer 1

You should use rbind instead of grid.arrange,

 plots <- list(p_a, p_b, p_c) grobs <- lapply(plots, ggplotGrob) g <- do.call(gridExtra::rbind.gtable, grobs) library(grid) grid.newpage() grid.draw(g) 

Answer 2

One hack could be to use facet_grid with scales = "free_y" and add some "invisible" data that will be used when ggplot automatically generates y-axis limits. This will work if you want to expand the automatically generated axes beyond your data, but not if you want to limit them to exclude some of your data:

 data <- data.frame(values=c(runif(20,0,40),runif(40,0,15)), product=c(rep("a",20),rep("b",20),rep("c",20)), treat=c("e","f","g","h","i"), time=c(0,6,24,48)) ggplot(data, aes(time, values, color=treat)) + geom_line() + geom_point() + geom_hline(data=data.frame(product=c("a", "b", "c"), values=c(40, 15, 15)), aes(yintercept=values), color="white") + facet_grid(product~., scales="free") + theme(panel.background=element_blank(), panel.grid=element_blank())