design: Create a complete experimental design with graph of design...

In biometryassist: Functions to Assist Design and Analysis of Agronomic Experiments

Create a complete experimental design with graph of design layout and skeletal ANOVA table

Description

Create a complete experimental design with graph of design layout and skeletal ANOVA table

Usage

design(
  type,
  treatments,
  reps,
  nrows,
  ncols,
  brows = NA,
  bcols = NA,
  byrow = TRUE,
  sub_treatments = NULL,
  fac.names = NULL,
  fac.sep = c("", " "),
  buffer = NULL,
  plot = TRUE,
  rotation = 0,
  size = 4,
  margin = FALSE,
  save = FALSE,
  savename = paste0(type, "_design"),
  plottype = "pdf",
  seed = TRUE,
  quiet = FALSE,
  ...
)

Arguments

type	The design type. One of crd, rcbd, lsd, split, strip, or a crossed factorial specified as ⁠crossed:<base>⁠ where ⁠<base>⁠ is one of crd, rcbd, or lsd.
treatments	A vector containing the treatment names or labels. For split-plot designs, these treatments are applied to whole-plots. For strip-plot designs, these treatments are applied to row-strips (entire rows within each block receive the same treatment).
reps	The number of replicates. Ignored for Latin Square Designs.
nrows	The number of rows in the design.
ncols	The number of columns in the design.
brows	For RCBD, split-plot and strip-plot designs. The number of rows in a block.
bcols	For RCBD, split-plot and strip-plot designs. The number of columns in a block.
byrow	For split-plot and strip-plot designs. Logical (default TRUE). Controls the within-block arrangement when there are multiple valid layouts.
sub_treatments	A vector of treatments for the sub-plot factor (required for split and strip). For strip-plot designs, these treatments are applied to column-strips (entire columns within each block receive the same treatment). To apply treatments to columns instead of rows, swap the treatments and sub_treatments arguments.
fac.names	Allows renaming of the A level of factorial designs by passing (optionally named) vectors of new labels to be applied to the factors within a list. See examples and details for more information.
fac.sep	The separator used by fac.names. Used to combine factorial design levels. If a vector of 2 levels is supplied, the first separates factor levels and label, and the second separates the different factors.
buffer	A string specifying the buffer plots to include for plotting. Default is NULL (no buffers plotted). Other options are "edge" (outer edge of trial area), "rows" (between rows), "columns" (between columns), "double row" (a buffer row each side of a treatment row) or "double column" (a buffer row each side of a treatment column). "blocks" (a buffer around each treatment block) will be implemented in a future release.
plot	Logical (default TRUE). If TRUE, display a plot of the generated design. A plot can always be produced later using autoplot().
rotation	Rotate the text output as Treatments within the plot. Allows for easier reading of long treatment labels. Takes positive and negative values being number of degrees of rotation from horizontal.
size	Increase or decrease the text size within the plot for treatment labels. Numeric with default value of 4.
margin	Logical (default FALSE). Expand the plot to the edges of the plotting area i.e. remove white space between plot and axes.
save	One of FALSE (default)/"none", TRUE/"both", "plot" or "workbook". Specifies which output to save.
savename	A file name for the design to be saved to. Default is the type of the design combined with "_design".
plottype	The type of file to save the plot as. Usually one of "pdf", "png", or "jpg". See ggplot2::ggsave() for all possible options.
seed	Logical (default TRUE). If TRUE, return the seed used to generate the design. If a numeric value, use that value as the seed for the design.
quiet	Logical (default FALSE). Hide the output.
...	Additional parameters passed to ggplot2::ggsave() for saving the plot.

Details

Supported designs are Completely Randomised (crd), Randomised Complete Block (rcbd), Latin Square (lsd), split-plot (split), strip-plot (strip), and crossed factorial designs via ⁠crossed:<base>⁠ where ⁠<base>⁠ is crd, rcbd, or lsd (e.g. crossed:crd).

If save = TRUE (or "both"), both the plot and the workbook will be saved to the current working directory, with filename given by savename. If one of either "plot" or "workbook" is specified, only that output is saved. If save = FALSE (the default, or equivalently "none"), nothing will be output.

fac.names can be supplied to provide more intuitive names for factors and their levels in factorial and split plot designs. They can be specified in a list format, for example fac.names = list(A_names = c("a", "b", "c"), B_names = c("x", "y", "z")). This will result a design output with a column named A_names with levels ⁠a, b, c⁠ and another named B_names with levels ⁠x, y, z⁠. Labels can also be supplied as a character vector (e.g. c("A", "B")) which will result in only the treatment column names being renamed. Only the first two elements of the list will be used, except in the case of a 3-way factorial design.

... allows extra arguments to be passed to ggsave() for output of the plot. The details of possible arguments can be found in ggplot2::ggsave().

Value

A list containing a data frame with the complete design (⁠$design⁠), a ggplot object with plot layout (⁠$plot.des⁠), the seed (⁠$seed⁠, if return.seed = TRUE), and the satab object (⁠$satab⁠), allowing repeat output of the satab table via cat(output$satab).

Examples

# Completely Randomised Design
des.out <- design(type = "crd", treatments = c(1, 5, 10, 20),
                  reps = 5, nrows = 4, ncols = 5, seed = 42)

# Randomised Complete Block Design
des.out <- design("rcbd", treatments = LETTERS[1:11], reps = 4,
                  nrows = 11, ncols = 4, brows = 11, bcols = 1, seed = 42)

# Latin Square Design
# Doesn't require reps argument
des.out <- design(type = "lsd", c("S1", "S2", "S3", "S4"),
                  nrows = 4, ncols = 4, seed = 42)

# Factorial Design (Crossed, Completely Randomised)
des.out <- design(type = "crossed:crd", treatments = c(3, 2),
                  reps = 3, nrows = 6, ncols = 3, seed = 42)

# Factorial Design (Crossed, Completely Randomised), renaming factors
des.out <- design(type = "crossed:crd", treatments = c(3, 2),
                  reps = 3, nrows = 6, ncols = 3, seed = 42,
                  fac.names = list(N = c(50, 100, 150),
                                   Water = c("Irrigated", "Rain-fed")))

# Factorial Design (Crossed, Randomised Complete Block Design),
# changing separation between factors
des.out <- design(type = "crossed:rcbd", treatments = c(3, 2),
                  reps = 3, nrows = 6, ncols = 3,
                  brows = 6, bcols = 1,
                  seed = 42, fac.sep = c(":", "_"))

# Factorial Design (Nested, Latin Square)
trt <- c("A1", "A2", "A3", "A4", "B1", "B2", "B3")
des.out <- design(type = "lsd", treatments = trt,
                  nrows = 7, ncols = 7, seed = 42)

# Split plot design
des.out <- design(type = "split", treatments = c("A", "B"), sub_treatments = 1:4,
                  reps = 4, nrows = 8, ncols = 4, brows = 4, bcols = 2, seed = 42)

# Alternative arrangement of the same design as above
des.out <- design(type = "split", treatments = c("A", "B"), sub_treatments = 1:4,
                  reps = 4, nrows = 8, ncols = 4, brows = 4, bcols = 2,
                  byrow = FALSE, seed = 42)

# Strip plot design
des.out <- design(type = "strip", treatments = c("A", "B", "C"), sub_treatments = 1:4,
                  reps = 4, nrows = 12, ncols = 4, brows = 3, bcols = 4, seed = 42)

biometryassist documentation built on Feb. 3, 2026, 5:06 p.m.