How to draw a closed curve around a set of points/nodes keeping a minimum distance?

Question

I basically want to achieve the same thing in Tikz as Ilonpilaaja in the following question:

TikZ: Curve through specified points

However, I have to do this multiple times with nodes that are spread around more chaotically. I am not happy having to manually specify all the points the curve has to pass through (X.south west, X.south east, etc.). I'd rather specify the coordinates that it has to pass some distance around.

To put it another way: I'd be quite happy with a cycled path with rounded corners, but then I'd want specify the center for each 'corner arc' rather than the underlying 'sharp corner' points. One could be translated to the other, but as far as I can tell this would require tedious calculation of angles.

Is there a (simple) way to do this?

A picture (even if just a doodle) speaks louder than a thousand words... — jub0bs, Aug 30 '13 at 00:17
the hobby package might be useful here- there are a few good demonstrations on this site, it's just a matter of some google fu :) — cmhughes, Aug 30 '13 at 00:27
Could you add a MWE so that we don’t need to set up the nodes? A dirty trick would be to set the outer sep to .5\pgflinewidth + <radius of corner arc> so that the center of those arcs still lie on the outer border of the node path. — Another idea would be to find a node’s anchor that lies more away from other nodes to use as a connection. — Qrrbrbirlbel, Aug 30 '13 at 03:03
Are you perhaps looking for padded boundary of convex hull or Hobby path realization in convex hull approach? — Claudio Fiandrino, Aug 30 '13 at 07:46
@ClaudioFiandrino That's exactly what I was looking for, thanks! I'll flag my question as a duplicate. — mhelvens, Aug 30 '13 at 09:09
Interesting that my one vote wouldn't be enough to close my own question. I suppose once it is out there it is everyone's question. :-) — mhelvens, Aug 30 '13 at 09:17
@mhelvens: you're welcome. I think users can always delete their own question (never tried, thus I'm not sure), but to close it 5 votes are necessary. Don't mind: it's not difficult to find them. — Claudio Fiandrino, Aug 30 '13 at 09:31
@ClaudioFiandrino I didn't want to delete because my question may contain keywords that will make it easier for others to find. — mhelvens, Aug 30 '13 at 11:59

How to draw a closed curve around a set of points/nodes keeping a minimum distance?

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