Setting absolute size of facets in ggplot2

Question

I\'m creating several facetted plots for a report. The number of facets varies between 2 and 8. Ideally, I\'d like the absolute size of each facet (across plots) to be the s

Answer 1

I've used the following function for this purpose,

set_panel_size <- function(p=NULL, g=ggplotGrob(p), file=NULL, 
                           margin = unit(1,"mm"),
                           width=unit(4, "cm"), 
                           height=unit(4, "cm")){

  panels <- grep("panel", g$layout$name)
  panel_index_w<- unique(g$layout$l[panels])
  panel_index_h<- unique(g$layout$t[panels])
  nw <- length(panel_index_w)
  nh <- length(panel_index_h)

if(getRversion() < "3.3.0"){

   # the following conversion is necessary
   # because there is no `[<-`.unit method
   # so promoting to unit.list allows standard list indexing
   g$widths <- grid:::unit.list(g$widths)
   g$heights <- grid:::unit.list(g$heights)

   g$widths[panel_index_w] <-  rep(list(width),  nw)
   g$heights[panel_index_h] <- rep(list(height), nh)

} else {

   g$widths[panel_index_w] <-  rep(width,  nw)
   g$heights[panel_index_h] <- rep(height, nh)

}

  if(!is.null(file))
    ggsave(file, g, 
           width = grid::convertWidth(sum(g$widths) + margin, 
                                unitTo = "in", valueOnly = TRUE),
           height = grid::convertHeight(sum(g$heights) + margin,  
                                  unitTo = "in", valueOnly = TRUE))

  g
}

g1 <- set_panel_size(plot1)
g2 <- set_panel_size(plot2)
gridExtra::grid.arrange(g1,g2)