CODEWITHSUNDEEP
algorithmlanguage-agnostictreemap
Montgomery 'monty' Jones
Montgomery 'monty' Jones

Reputation: 1091

What's the algorithm for laying out a circular TreeMap?

Given a standard nested circular treemap, how do you calculate the where to place the circles?

Upvotes: 5

Views: 888

Answers (1)

Thomas Ahle
Thomas Ahle

Reputation: 31614

Your main problem can be described as this: "Given a set of circles of varying radius, how does one place them within a larger circle, so that none of them overlap".

It's a hard problem, but here's a brute force solution to get you started:

  1. Sort the circles by size
  2. Place the largest circle on the inner rim of the bounding circle
  3. For the rest of the circles (r1), do the following:
    1. Iterate over all pairs of already placed circles (r2,r3) (including the outer one)
    2. Find the (one or two) points that have distance r1+r2 to the first circle and r1+r3 to the second circle.
    3. Try to place the new circle here.

The above uses the observation that in a perfect packing, every circle must border to at least two other circles. You can use the algorithm to provide a full search, or you can just iterate randomly and greedily choose the first available spot.

Upvotes: 1

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