Tangential Circles

Hi,
I have a basic shape (curves/lines shown blue) . Im looking for an automated method by which i can easily generate circles tangential to its boundary. The circles (shown yellow here) would also need to be positioned tangential to each other (touching) etc. The circle diameter as user defined. Only have the basic version of sketchup. .Image attached. Thankyou.

If you offset the blue face by the radius of the circle, you can then use a plugin called something like ‘Component along Curve’ - sorry, I can’t remember the exact name at the moment - to place the circles spaced a diameter apart along the offset edge.

EDIT: it’s ‘Copy along curve’ and you can download it free from

EDIT 2: I haven’t tried it myself, but from the description, I think it ought to do what you want, though it might take a little experiment to see if spacing along the curve will get you circles ‘near enough’ tangent - they won’t necessarily be exactly tangent except on straight sections. There’s an option in the plugin to specify an offset, so you might not need to draw an offset line first.

EDIT 3: There’s another extension that does much the same thing, from the Extension Warehouse, called PathCopy. Haven’t tried that either myself, but it too sounds close to what you want.

Thanks so much John :slight_smile:

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