panel_fix: Set the panel width/height of a plot to a fixed value

In thisplot: Utility Functions for Plotting

Set the panel width/height of a plot to a fixed value

Description

The ggplot object, when stored, can only specify the height and width of the entire plot, not the panel. The latter is obviously more important to control the final result of a plot. This function can set the panel width/height of plot to a fixed value and rasterize it.

Usage

panel_fix(
  x = NULL,
  panel_index = NULL,
  respect = NULL,
  width = NULL,
  height = NULL,
  margin = 1,
  padding = 0,
  units = "in",
  raster = FALSE,
  dpi = 300,
  return_grob = FALSE,
  bg_color = "white",
  save = NULL,
  verbose = FALSE,
  ...
)

panel_fix_overall(
  x,
  panel_index = NULL,
  respect = NULL,
  width = NULL,
  height = NULL,
  margin = 1,
  units = "in",
  raster = FALSE,
  dpi = 300,
  return_grob = FALSE,
  bg_color = "white",
  save = NULL,
  verbose = TRUE
)

Arguments

x	A ggplot object, a grob object, or a combined plot made by patchwork or cowplot package.
panel_index	Specify the panel to be fixed. If NULL, will fix all panels.
respect	Whether row heights and column widths should respect each other.
width	The desired width of the fixed panels.
height	The desired height of the fixed panels.
margin	The margin to add around each panel, in inches. Default is 1.
padding	The padding to add around each panel, in inches. Default is 0.
units	The units in which height, width and margin are given. Can be "mm", "cm", "in", etc. See grid::unit.
raster	Whether to rasterize the panel.
dpi	Plot resolution.
return_grob	Whether to return a grob object instead of a wrapped patchwork object. Default is FALSE.
bg_color	The background color of the plot.
save	NULL or the file name used to save the plot.
verbose	Whether to print the message. Default is TRUE.
...	Additional arguments passed to other functions.

Value

If return_grob is TRUE, returns a gtable object. Otherwise, returns a patchwork object with fixed panel sizes. The returned object has a size attribute containing width, height, and units.

Examples

library(ggplot2)
p <- ggplot(
  data = mtcars, aes(x = mpg, y = wt, colour = cyl)
) +
  geom_point() +
  facet_wrap(~gear, nrow = 2)
# fix the size of panel
panel_fix(
  p,
  width = 5,
  height = 3,
  units = "cm"
)
# rasterize the panel
panel_fix(
  p,
  width = 5,
  height = 3,
  units = "cm",
  raster = TRUE,
  dpi = 90
)

# `panel_fix` will build and render the plot when input a ggplot object.
# so after `panel_fix`, the size of the object will be changed.
object.size(p)
object.size(
  panel_fix(
    p,
    width = 5,
    height = 3,
    units = "cm"
  )
)

thisplot documentation built on March 7, 2026, 5:07 p.m.