This was a fun exercise. How to place a random number of dots on a circles circumference with exact the same distance between them? The need arose building a program for automated seating. Rectangular tables were no big deal, but what about the round tables?

You can download the workbook at the bottom of this article

How it’s used in the automated seating program
https://en.excelguru.no/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/WorkingWithShapesAndPythagoras.mp4

The solution came with Pythagoras

Fig. 1

As you can see from Fig. 1, I calculate three right-angled triangles to be able to calculate the hypotenuse Z.

This is not entirely correct, since the hypotenuse is straight and the circle is curved. To minimize this discrepancy, I make 1,000 calculations for every quarter of the circle.

If the radius of the circle is 100cm, the difference between Y1 and Y2 will be 0.1. This gives a good result both mathematically and visually.

Download the Excel workbook: WorkingWithShapesAndPythagoras.xlsm (373 downloads )

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