# Drawing multiple circles on Tikz

I want to draw a unit circle with multiple circles with centred on (cos(x),sin(x)).

\begin{tikzpicture}
\draw (0,0) circle (2cm);

\coordinate (a) at (2;10);

\draw (a) circle (0.3cm);

\end{tikzpicture}


How can I define points using polar coordinates to draw a circle at (2cos(10),2sin(10))?

• you can use the polar syntax (10:2) which is (<angle>:radius) Feb 12, 2016 at 1:44
• Welcome to Tex SE. Have you tried searching for similar drawings? The are many like this on this site. Feb 12, 2016 at 2:00

Without polar coordinates, this can easily be done as follows

\documentclass[border={10}]{standalone}

\usepackage{tikz}

\begin{document}

\def \f {1.0}

\begin{tikzpicture}

\foreach \a in {0, 30, ..., 350 }
\draw ({\f*cos(\a)}, {\f*sin(\a)}) circle (0.2cm);

\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}


The result is

• Glad it worked. Feb 12, 2016 at 1:56
• @daruma If this answers your question, the local way to say 'thanks!' is to accept the answer by clicking on the greyed-out tick at the top-left corner of the answer. (When you have more reputation, you'll also be able to vote answers up, but I don't think you can do that quite yet.)
– cfr
Feb 12, 2016 at 2:31

With polar coordinates this can also be done :)

 \draw (\a:1) circle (0.2cm);


The syntax is (<angle>:<radius>). The output is

% arara: pdflatex
% !arara: indent: {overwrite: yes}
\documentclass[border=3mm]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
\foreach \a in {0, 30, ..., 350 }
\draw (\a:1) circle (0.2cm);
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}


Or, alternatively, using the graphs library, allows you to use

\graph[nodes={draw,circle,minimum width=.2cm},
clockwise,
empty nodes,
n=12]{subgraph I_n};


here's a complete MWE:

% arara: pdflatex
% !arara: indent: {overwrite: yes}
\documentclass[border=3mm]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{graphs}
\usetikzlibrary{graphs.standard}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

\documentclass[pstricks]{standalone}
\usepackage{pst-plot}

\def\N{10}
\def\offsetAngle{19}

The counter intuitive name in \Xnodecount is actually the last index of the zero-based node array X. If the curve is a closed curve, we have to subtract 1 from \Xnodecount to remove X9 (based on the above example) that is actually equal to X0.