How to fill a square with smaller squares/rectangles?

c# algorithm drawing
esac picture esac · Dec 16, 2009 · Viewed 9.6k times · Source

In my office at work, we are not allowed to paint the walls, so I have decided to frame out squares and rectangles, attach some nice fabric to them, and arrange them on the wall.

I am trying to write a method which will take my input dimensions (9' x 8' 8") and min/max size (1' x 3', 2', 4', etc..) and generate a random pattern of squares and rectangles to fill the wall. I tried doing this by hand, but I'm just not happy with the layout that I got, and it takes about 35 minutes each time I want to 'randomize' the layout.

Answer

Brian picture Brian · Dec 16, 2009

One solution is to start with x*y squares and randomly merge squares together to form rectangles. You'll want to give differing weights to different size squares to keep the algorithm from just ending up with loads of tiny rectangles (i.e. large rectangles should probably have a higher chance of being picked for merging until they get too big).

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