Embedding a miniature plot within a plot

Question

Does anybody know of a general way to embed plots into other plots to produce something like the mockup below?

I know that in lattice you can do it with print(..., more=TRUE, positions=...) as explained in this question, and I guess ggplot has a solution to it aswell (but I'm not very good with ggplot). The problem is that I want to embed a regular plot from the survival package that use the standard graphics package into a lattice plot.

A mockup of an embedded plot

Thanks in advance!

I think I would give up and do it in post-process.. depends on the target of course. If it's PPT presentation, then it's very easy. — Tomas, Oct 17 '11 at 13:42
may this http://casoilresource.lawr.ucdavis.edu/drupal/node/1007 helps? — EDi, Oct 17 '11 at 13:52

ROLO · Answer 1 · 2013-05-28T17:27:11.223

26

And here is a way to do it the other way around, ggplot2 graphic in a base graphic:

require(ggplot2)
require(grid)

plot(sin, -pi, 2*pi)
qp <- qplot(mpg, wt, data=mtcars)
print(qp, vp=viewport(.8, .75, .2, .2))

enter image description here

edited May 28 '13 at 17:27

answered Oct 17 '11 at 15:14

ROLO

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That looks like it would be very general (as well as incredibly concise), since lattice plots (also using the grid-engine) could also be embedded and you seem to be able do any-grid on any-grid combination that I have tried. – IRTFM Oct 17 '11 at 15:26
Thanks for the tip, even though it is not as general as Al R.'s answer it is definatelly easier to use. – Backlin Oct 18 '11 at 14:02
Wanna see if you can tackle [these histogram insets](http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2011/10/ggplot2-for-big-data.html)? :) I think it'll be interesting when they arrive. – Iterator Oct 28 '11 at 01:44
Only `required(grid)` is missing in the example I think. – Juan Apr 27 '13 at 01:52
And then, if you use ggsave to save it as pdf, the only plot that appears on the result file will be the last plot. – Eduardo Jun 04 '13 at 11:46
@Eduardo: that is the intended behaviour of ggsave. To save a pdf use pdf(file='somefile.pdf') to start and dev.off() to stop writing to file. – ROLO Jun 04 '13 at 13:37

score 18 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 16 '15 at 08:52

You could try the gridBase package which provides some functionality for integrating base and grid-based graphics (including lattice and ggplot2). The example below embeds a base graphics plot inside of a lattice plot.

library(lattice)
library(gridBase)
library(grid) 

plot.new()
pushViewport(viewport())
xvars <- rnorm(25)
yvars <- rnorm(25)
xyplot(yvars~xvars)
pushViewport(viewport(x=.6,y=.8,width=.25,height=.25,just=c("left","top")))
grid.rect()
par(plt = gridPLT(), new=TRUE)
plot(xvars,yvars)
popViewport(2)

More detail here: http://casoilresource.lawr.ucdavis.edu/drupal/node/1007 And here: http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/gridBase/vignettes/gridBase.pdf

Very elegant! Exactly what I hoped to find. – Backlin Oct 18 '11 at 13:19 — Backlin, Oct 18 '11 at 13:19

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 17 '11 at 14:09

3

Check out the Teaching Demos package package TeachingDemos package - and the subplot() function It might work on the lattice as well - haven't tried it though.

answered Oct 17 '11 at 14:09

Rainer

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Embedding a miniature plot within a plot

3 Answers3

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