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Index › Programming Questions & Help › Programs › Space Filling Algorithm
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Space Filling Algorithm (Read 2107 times)
emilebennettt
Space Filling Algorithm
Jan 29th, 2009, 11:39am  
Hi,

Hoping someone can help uncover the mystery that is space filling.

I find lots of examples on google of space filling apps, but no one seems to want to explain how to do it, or release sample code.

Any help would be much appreciated in getting to the bottom of how to do this.

Cheers,

Emile
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PhiLho 
Re: Space Filling Algorithm
Reply #1 - Jan 29th, 2009, 5:28pm  
You are a bit too generic... I can easily fill the space of the sketch... for example with squares of equal size! Which is also a very primitive tiling method.
The algorithms behind space filling are non-trivial, although perhaps reachable in some cases for a medium level programmer like me.
But we (I) need a precise goal, like filling a circle with random sized circles, or filling a rectangle with a curve, etc.
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emilebennettt
Re: Space Filling Algorithm
Reply #2 - Jan 29th, 2009, 5:36pm  
Hi

Sorry, you are absolutely correct...my question was probably a little vague!

If i could get the basic principals behind filling a square space with random size squares, then that would be a great kick start to get to where i need/want to get.

Thanks for your help....
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frankBerg
Re: Space Filling Algorithm
Reply #3 - Jan 29th, 2009, 5:55pm  
http://www.complexification.net/gallery/machines/boxFitting/

http://www.davebollinger.com/works/boxfit/
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davbol
Re: Space Filling Algorithm
Reply #4 - Jan 29th, 2009, 6:53pm  
"space filling" typically implies the field covering such things as Peano / Hilbert / Sierpinski / etal curves.  Another search word might be "tiling", if that's what you're after, implying such things as Penrose tiles, et al.  L-Systems come to mind as something you might want to look into.

Hard to suggest a solution without knowing the problem to be solved.  For instance, if you just want to divide up a square into other squares, a simple recursive method might go like:

divide a square into 4 equal quadrants
take one or more of those quadrants and repeat
(until some stop condition reached, like too small)

..now you have a square full of many smaller squares.  how you select which quadrants to further subdivide will affect the final pattern.
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emilebennettt
Re: Space Filling Algorithm
Reply #5 - Jan 29th, 2009, 8:14pm  
Thanks for all the advice guys,

Will be looking up all those names tonight!

..and i'll follow up with my progress.

Thanks again

e
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mtchl
Re: Space Filling Algorithm
Reply #6 - Feb 13th, 2009, 3:04am  
"Packing" is another way to think of space filling - so search for packing algorithms. I just made a (very simple) square packing process for a data visualisation: http://visiblearchive.blogspot.com/2009/01/packing-them-in.html

The algorithm is described in the blog post, and there's also some (no doubt ugly) code available on the sketch page. Cheers,

Mitchell
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