I use a macro for this but can't believe it doesn't already exist. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe it's been implemented with newer versions.
Am I missing something here, I've had distribute set up like this for ever.
That gets you the top right image I've shown above (BAD).
Not what I get. See screen cap
Your snip doesn't show the page boundaries. Distributing shapes evenly by themselves is easy. Distributing them across the page or between a rectangle requires macros.