Happy New Year!
This month’s challenge is inspired by recent events: the October 2025 Louvre heist in Paris France.
Using Mathcad Prime, solve any or all of the following challenges:
Challenge 1 (Polygonal): find the minimum number of guards necessary to cover 100% of the following polygonal space.
To be unobtrusive, the guards must be placed at vertices. The guards are inside the museum. Assume that the guards can turn their necks and bodies to see everywhere around that point that is not blocked by a wall. The guards have excellent vision and can see everything clearly between them and a wall.
Challenge 2 (Graphing): using the plotting and charting capabilities of Mathcad, depict the placement of the guards and their zones of coverage.
Challenge 3 (Orthogonal Variant): find the minimum number of guards for the following art gallery.
Challenge 4 (Graphing): Depict the placement of the guards and their zones of coverage for the orthogonal variant.
Challenge 5 (Basher Tarr variant): You are the tech expert for the Ocean’s 11 crew. Your job is to remove one guard to leave the maximum amount of exposed area. Which guard do you remove in either of the scenarios?
Note: Creo Parametric 7.0 CAD part models and a Mathcad Prime 10 worksheet have been attached. If people want to incorporate Creo into their solution, feel free. The Mathcad worksheet contains matrices of the vertices.
Find the Mathcad Community Challenge Guidelines here!
There seems to be an error in the vertices table. Although a number of dimensions are missing in the Creo screenshot, fortunately the relevant one is specified:
