Back in 2010 I posted some R code for circle packing . Now, just five years later, I've ported the code to Rcpp and created a little package which you can find at GitHub . The main function is circleLayout which takes a set of overlapping circles and tries to find a non-overlapping arrangement for them. Here's an example: And here's the code: # Create some random circles, positioned within the central portion # of a bounding square, with smaller circles being more common than # larger ones. ncircles <- 200 limits <- c(-50, 50) inset <- diff(limits) / 3 rmax <- 20 xyr <- data.frame( x = runif(ncircles, min(limits) + inset, max(limits) - inset), y = runif(ncircles, min(limits) + inset, max(limits) - inset), r = rbeta(ncircles, 1, 10) * rmax) # Next, we use the `circleLayout` function to try to find a non-overlapping # arrangement, allowing the circles to occupy any part of the bounding square. # The returned value is a list with elements for