[mgolawala]

I am not at all well informed about this but I imagined a Dyson swarm would sort of grow and evolve organically over time. Not as an end goal in themselves.

For example, if you start building space habitats (even if they are enclosed cylinders such that they hold an atmosphere and provide gravity via rotation) you need to put them somewhere. It makes sense to throw them in orbit around the star at some optimal distance (for example at 1AU +/- some amount), if you continue to put more and more such habitats around a star in similar orbits over time, in sufficient numbers, wouldn't they start to resemble a Dyson swarm?

[cletus]

Think of it this way: a cloud is just water droplets suspended in the air. The air is transparent. Water is transparent. Yet... you can't see through clouds.

That's essentially what a full Dyson Swarm looks like.

People have modeled how many orbitals you'd need to achieve this and I believe that if you orbit them at 1 AU (plus or minus) the mean distance between them is still around 150,000km.