ggplot2 (version 1.0.0)

geom_blank: Blank, draws nothing.

Description

The blank geom draws nothing, but can be a useful way of ensuring common scales between different plots.

Usage

geom_blank(mapping = NULL, data = NULL, stat = "identity",
  position = "identity", ...)

Arguments

mapping

The aesthetic mapping, usually constructed with aes or aes_string. Only needs to be set at the layer level if you are overriding the plot defaults.

data

A layer specific dataset - only needed if you want to override the plot defaults.

stat

The statistical transformation to use on the data for this layer.

position

The position adjustment to use for overlapping points on this layer

...

other arguments passed on to layer. This can include aesthetics whose values you want to set, not map. See layer for more details.

Examples

qplot(length, rating, data = movies, geom = "blank")
# Nothing to see here!

# Take the following scatter plot
a <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = wt, y = mpg), . ~ cyl) + geom_point()
# Add to that some lines with geom_abline()
df <- data.frame(a = rnorm(10, 25), b = rnorm(10, 0))
a + geom_abline(aes(intercept = a, slope = b), data = df)
# Suppose you then wanted to remove the geom_point layer
# If you just remove geom_point, you will get an error
b <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = wt, y = mpg))
b + geom_abline(aes(intercept = a, slope = b), data = df)
# Switching to geom_blank() gets the desired plot
c <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = wt, y = mpg)) + geom_blank()
c + geom_abline(aes(intercept = a, slope = b), data = df)