I am trying to use MATLAB for generating random locations for non-uniform size spheres (non-overlapping) in a cube. The for loop in the code below never seems to end. I don't know what am missing in the code. I have ran the code for no. of spheres (n) = 10; dims = [ 10 10 10 ] function [ c r ] = randomSphere( dims ) % creating one sphere at random inside [0..dims(1)]x[0..dims(2)]x... % radius and center coordinates are sampled from a uniform distribution % over the relevant domain. % output: c - center of sphere (vector cx, cy,... ) % r - radius of sphere (scalar) r = rand(1); % you might want to scale this w.r.t dims or other consideration c = r + rand( size(dims) )./( dims - 2*r ); % make sure sphere does not exceed boundaries function ovlp = nonOverlapping( centers, rads ) % check if several spheres with centers and rads overlap or not ovlp = false; if numel( rads ) == 1 return; % nothing to check for a single sphere end dst = sqrt( sum( bsxfun( @minus, permute( centers, [1 3 2] ),... permute( centers, [3 1 2] ) ).^2, 3) ); ovlp = dst >= bsxfun( @plus, rads, rads.' ); %' all distances must be smaller than r1+r2 ovlp = any( ovlp(:) ); % all must not overlap function [centers rads] = sampleSpheres( dims, n ) % dims is assumed to be a row vector of size 1-by-ndim % preallocate ndim = numel(dims); centers = zeros( n, ndim ); rads = zeros( n, 1 ); ii = 1; while ii <= n [centers(ii,:), rads(ii) ] = randomSphere( dims ); if nonOverlapping( centers(1:ii,:), rads(1:ii) ) ii = ii + 1; % accept and move on end end