Making a paper model sounds like a good idea to me, but if you want to work
on the ground instead, bisect the southeast angle and bisect the southwest
angle. Where the bisectors meet is the center of your circle. Note that
because your west side is bent, there may not be a perfect circle that
touches all 3 sides, but the bisection method will find it if it exists.
..
"Warren" wrote in message
...
DrLith wrote:

I didn't do real good at geometry class, either, but I think I did come
up
with a reasonable scale drawing of the space you described. If I'm
close,
then a 12' diameter circle will NOT be big enough to do what you want it
to. The center of such a circle would need to be 6' up from the street
and
6' in from the driveway if it's going to touch both, and it's not going
to
touch the west/northwest "almost straight" boundary at all.

Instead, you're going to need something closer to 17-18' in diameter
(about 8.5' in radius) centered 8.5-9' north of the street edge and
8.5-9'
west of the driveway edge.

I'd suggest you draw out your own scale drawing, though--not too hard to
do if you cut out line segments of the appropriate length, lay down the
easy parts first (south and east side) and then test position the other
three segments until you get a mostly right angle in the northwest.

I think you're right. I cut-out some paper strips to represent the sides.
Took me a good half-hour to get them down right, and that was even after
using corners of the paper to make combined south and east, and north and
northwest sides. It took awhile, including re-taping a couple of times
when
corners didn't line-up, but I finally got it down.

I then used variously sized lids from jars and bottles until I found what
that fit the way I was hoping, and when I measured it, it was about 17
units
in diameter.

Truth is, I never did get it to fit as snugly into the narrow end as I was
seeing when I was looking at the actual location. This leaves me with two
too big areas in the southwest and southeast corners, and a circular area
far bigger than I want. I can't believe my perception from the ground was
so
far off.

Even if I fudge everything in favor of what I envisioned, I still don't
get
down to anything close to the 12' diameter I was guessing.

Of course this is exactly why I wanted to know all my measurements
*before*
I started digging, and placing stones.

--
Warren H.

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