How to draw an empty plot?

Question

How about something like:

plot.new()

I suggest that someone needs to make empty plot in order to add some graphics on it later. So, using

plot(1, type="n", xlab="", ylab="", xlim=c(0, 10), ylim=c(0, 10))

you can specify the axes limits of your graphic.

The following does not plot anything in the plot and it will remain empty.

plot(NULL, xlim=c(0,1), ylim=c(0,1), ylab="y label", xlab="x lablel")

This is useful when you want to add lines or dots afterwards within a for loop or something similar. Just remember to change the xlim and ylim values based on the data you want to plot.

As a side note: This can also be used for Boxplot, Violin plots and swarm plots. for those remember to add add = TRUE to their plotting function and also specify at = to specify on which number you want to plot them (default is x axis unless you have set horz = TRUE in these functions.

This is marginally simpler than your original solution:

plot(0,type='n',axes=FALSE,ann=FALSE)

Adam, following your comment above ("I wanted the empty plot to serve as filler in a multiplot (mfrow) plot."), what you actually want is the mfg option

    par(mfg=c(row,column))

- which controls where you want to put the next plot. For instance, to put a plot in the middle of a 3x3 multiplot, do

    par(mfrow=c(3,3))
    par(mfg=c(2,2))
    plot(rnorm(10))

You need a new plot window, and also a coordinate system, so you need plot.new() and plot.window(), then you can start to add graph elements:

plot.new( )
plot.window( xlim=c(-5,5), ylim=c(-5,5) )

points( rnorm(100), rnorm(100) )
axis( side=1 )

example plot