How to get tidy circles in a hexagonal circle packing pattern?

[Quan_Li]

circle_packing_using_hexa.gh (8.0 KB)

I just noticed there is a very interesting circle packing pattern in my 5-year-old Bluetooth speaker.

I replicated the pattern using the vertex and center points of equilateral hexagons as the hole’s center.
Quite simple, but when it comes to the edge area, I am baffled. Seems like it is not possible to make the outmost area of this pattern tidy like on the speaker if one likes to keep the circles within the same distance from each other.

How did they make this pattern, or is it me thinking wrong about the pattern logic(not the same distance between holes)?

I need your idea, Thanks!

This is an introduction of this speaker on the web.
Xiaomi Wireless Bluetooth Speaker reviewed (fudzilla.com)

[laurent_delrieu]

Hello
if you want to replicate this pattern you could look here

Radial - Equal Spacing Per Concentric Ring (Extent P?)

For what you want just do that

concentric.gh (7.0 KB)

[seltzdesign (Armin Seltz)]

You are trying to use a hexagonal grid for arranging circles in a circular pattern. Even though the in the middle it kind of looks like it might be hexagonal because you can see those 6 distinct directions.

So its actually not circle packing. To get equal spacing between different circles with different radius, you would use circumference = 2pi * radius. So if the radius increases by 1 each time, the number of circles needs to increase by 2 * pi. Since it is kind of close to 6, you can just use 6 and get almost equal spacing, but get those alignments in 6 directions.

It super easy to do.

circle_pattern.gh (6.6 KB)

[Joseph_Oster]

This also reminds me of these threads:

Gradient Dot Pattern

Your radiused rectangle in this thread is 749 units long compared to 595 units in the previous thread (and my last post). And the corner radius is smaller. So more holes (400) works better than 141 holes. And it looks better to reduce ‘Min Radius’ from 0.429 to 0.250. [edge_holes_2021Oct27c] edge_holes_2021Oct27c.gh (51.4 KB)

Map Curves to Surface

Added a “gutter” slider (blue group) to inset the outer ring of circles, added cut holes (orange group, SLOW!), adjusted some parameters slightly. [edge_holes_2022Sep22b] edge_holes_2022Sep22b.gh (104.8 KB)

Circular Packing on surface edge

I removed quite a bit of extraneous nonsense from your model. Circle packing is down the hall. [edge_holes_2021Oct22a] edge_holes_2021Oct22a.gh (56.1 KB)

Radial - Equal Spacing Per Concentric Ring (Extent P?)

[Joseph_Oster]

@Quan_Li

Quite simple, but when it comes to the edge area, I am baffled.

By the way, it’s very easy to eliminate those circles overlapping the perimeter curve (purple group).

circle_packing_using_hex_2023Jan26a.gh (13.2 KB)

But again, starting with a hex pattern instead of center points on concentric circles isn’t right for this.

[Quan_Li]

Thank you very much!

[Quan_Li]

Thanks for the help!