Generating triangular/hexagonal coordinates (xyz)

Question

I\'m trying to come up with an iterative function that generates xyz coordinates for a hexagonal grid. With a starting hex position (say 0,0,0 for simplicity), I want to cal

Answer 1

Another possible solution, that runs in O(radius²), unlike the O(radius⁴) of tehMick's solution (at the expense of a lot of style) is this:

radius = 4
for r in range(radius):
    print "radius %d" % r
    x = 0
    y = -r
    z = +r
    print x,y,z
    for i in range(r):
        x = x+1
        z = z-1
        print x,y,z
    for i in range(r):
        y = y+1
        z = z-1
        print x,y,z
    for i in range(r):
        x = x-1
        y = y+1
        print x,y,z
    for i in range(r):
        x = x-1
        z = z+1
        print x,y,z
    for i in range(r):
        y = y-1
        z = z+1
        print x,y,z
    for i in range(r-1):
        x = x+1
        y = y-1
        print x,y,z

or written a little more concisely:

radius = 4
deltas = [[1,0,-1],[0,1,-1],[-1,1,0],[-1,0,1],[0,-1,1],[1,-1,0]]
for r in range(radius):
    print "radius %d" % r
    x = 0
    y = -r
    z = +r
    print x,y,z
    for j in range(6):
        if j==5:
            num_of_hexas_in_edge = r-1
        else:
            num_of_hexas_in_edge = r
        for i in range(num_of_hexas_in_edge):
            x = x+deltas[j][0]
            y = y+deltas[j][1]
            z = z+deltas[j][2]            
            print x,y,z

It's inspired by the fact the hexagons are actually on the exterior of a hexagon themselves, so you can find the coordinates of 1 of its points, and then calculate the others by moving on its 6 edges.