# How to plot several small circles in a bigger circle [closed]

I want to plot several small circles in a bigger one with constraint minimization. The distance between any two small circles must be >= to 2*the radius in order not to enter one another. When I change the number of the small circles the length of the radius will vary according to these changes in order to fit the small ones. When I execute the program, I must get plot of the new circles

• Should the circles be arranged in some special way? – C. E. Nov 2 '15 at 1:34
• Graphics[{Disk[#, 1] & /@ (2 CirclePoints[6]), Disk[], Circle[{0, 0}, 3]}] gives one possible arrangement, but your question is currently ill-posed. – J. M.'s technical difficulties Nov 2 '15 at 1:36
• Suppose that I have a big circle and I want to plot n small circles in it, say 8 circles 1 inch radius each. What is the smallest radius for the biggest circle to contain all of the small ones? Constraint minimization, they must not be inside one another. How will I write the function, which will minimize this radius for the general case for a general n? I need to write an algorithm for n number of circles, when I change the n number the amount of the small circles will change and the radius of the biggest circle will change too. – gamaali2000 Nov 2 '15 at 3:36
• The following link, which is contributed by Ed Pegg Jr answers my question if I get the code. demonstrations.wolfram.com/CirclesPackedInACircle – gamaali2000 Nov 2 '15 at 3:53
• You can get the code by clicking "Download Author Code" on the right. But it doesn't do any constrained minimization, it just gets the circle positions from a big hard-coded list that looks like circlelist = N[1/10^16 {{{0, 0}}, {{10000000000000000, 0}, {-10000000000000000, 0}}, {{0, 11547005383792515}, {-10000000000000000, -5773502691896258}, {10000000000000000, -5773502691896258}}, ...} – user484 Nov 2 '15 at 4:03