arc transform start end point to start angle end angle - geometry

Given a description of an arc which has a startpoint and endpoint (both in Cartesian x,y coordinates), radius and direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise), I need to convert the arc to one with a start-angle, end-angle, center, and radius.
Is there known algorithm or pseudo code that allows me to do this? Also, is there any specific term to describe these kinds of transformations?

You can find a center solving this equation system:
(sx-cx)^2 + (sy-cy)^2=R^2
(ex-cx)^2 + (ey-cy)^2=R^2
where (sx,sy) are coordinates of starting point, (ex,ey) for ending point, unknowns cx, cy for center.
This system has two solutions. Then it is possible to find angles as
StartAngle = ArcTan2(sy-cy, sx-cx)
EndAngle = ArcTan2(ey-cy, ex-cx)
Note that known direction doesn't allow to select one from two possible solutions without additional limitations. For example, start=(0,1), end=(1,0), R=1 and Dir = clockwise give us both Pi/2 arc with center (0,0) and 3*Pi/2 arc with center (1,1)

I'd propose a different approach than MBo to obtain the centers of the two circles, which have the given radius and pass to both start and end point.
If P and Q are start and end point of the arc, the center of each of the two circles lies on the line L which is orthogonal to PQ, the line from P to Q, and which bisects PQ. The distance d from the centers to L is easily obtained by Pythagoras theorem. If e is the length of PQ, then d^2 + (e/2)^2 = r^2. This way you avoid to solve that system of equations you get from MBo's approach.
Note that, in case you have a semicircle, any approach will become numerically unstable because there is only one circle of the given radius with P and Q on it. (I guess I recall the correct term is 'the problem is ill posed' in that case. It happens when P and Q are precisely 2r apart, and to figure out whether this actually true you need to check for equality of two doubles, which is always a bit problematic. If, for some reason, you know you have a semicircle you are better of to just calculate the center of PQ).

Related

how to calculate anti/clockwise angle in direction of lines?

I need to offset a curve, which by the simplest way is just shifting the points perpendicularly. I can access each point to calculate angle of each line along given path, for now I use atan2. Then I take those two angle and make average of it. It returns the shortest angle, not what I need in this case.
How can I calculate angle of each connection? Concerning that I am not interested in the shortest angle but the one that would create parallel offset curve.
Assuming 2D case...
So do a cross product of direction vectors of 2 neighboring lines the sign of z coordinate of the result will tell you if the lines are CW/CCW
So if you got 3 consequent control points on the polyline: p0,p1,p2 then:
d1 = p1-p0
d2 = p2-p1
if you use some 3D vector math then convert them to 3D by setting:
d1.z=0;
d2.z=0;
now compute 3D cross:
n = cross(d1,d2)
which returns vector perpendicular to both vectors of size equals to the area of quad (parallelogram) constructed with d1,d2 as base vectors. The direction (from the 2 possible) is determined by the winding rule of the p0,p1,p2 so inspecting z of the result is enough.
The n.x,n.y are not needed so you can compute directly without doing full cross product:
n.z=(d1.x*d2.y)-(d1.y*d2.x)
if (n.z>0) case1
if (n.z<0) case2
if the case1 is CW or CCW depends on your coordinate system properties (left/right handness). This approach is very commonly used in CG fur back face culling of polygons ...
if n.z is zero it means that your vectors/lines are either parallel or at lest one of them is zero.
I think these might interest you:
draw outline for some connected lines
How can I create an internal spiral for a polygon?
Also in 2D you do not need atan2 to get perpendicular vector... You can do instead this:
u = (x,y)
v = (-y,x)
w = (x,-y)
so u is any 2D vector and v,w are the 2 possible perpendicular vectors to u in 2D. they are the result of:
cross((x,y,0),(0,0,1))
cross((0,0,1),(x,y,0))

Making a Bezier curve based on 3 points the line will intersect

A quadratic bezier curve needs these three points, but I do not have an ordered pair of p1. Instead, I have the ordered pair of points here
The middle point (P1) is the highest point of the parabola.
The parabola is equal in both sides
How do I get the 3 points from image 1 using the points from image 2?
Apply the knowledge explained in https://pomax.github.io/bezierinfo/#abc and you should be good to go. You'll need to decide which time value that "somewhere on the curve" point has, and then you can use the formula for the projection ratio to find the actual control point coordinate.
However, at t=0.5 the ratio is just "1:1" so things get even easier because your point projects onto the midpoint of the line that connects that first and last point, and the real control point is the same distance "above" your point as the point is above that line:
So you just compute the midpoint:
m =
x: (p1.x + p2.x) / 2
y: (p1.y + p2.y) / 2
and the x and y distance to the midpoint from the "p2 you have" point:
d =
x: (p2.x - m.x)
y: (p2.y - m.y)
and then the real p2 is simply that distance away from the "p2 you have":
real2 =
x: p2.x + d.x
y: p2.y + d.y
However, note that this only works for t=0.5: both that projected point on the start--end line and the distance ratios will be (possibly very) different for any other t value and you should use the formula that the Bezier primer talks about.
Also note that what you call "the peak" is in no way guaranteed to be at t=0.5... for example, have a look at this curve:
The point that is marked as belonging to t=0.5 is certainly not where you would say the "peak" of the curve is (in fact, that's closer to t=0.56), so if all you have is three points, you technically always have incomplete information and you're going to have to invent some rule for deciding how to fill in the missing bits. In this case "what t value do I consider my somewhere-on-the-curve point to be?".

What is the fastest way to find the center of an irregular convex polygon?

I'm interested in a fast way to calculate the rotation-independent center of a simple, convex, (non-intersecting) 2D polygon.
The example below (on the left) shows the mean center (sum of all points divided by the total), and the desired result on the right.
Some options I've already considered.
bound-box center (depends on rotation, and ignores points based on their relation to the axis).
Straight skeleton - too slow to calculate.
I've found a way which works reasonably well, (weight the points by the edge-lengths) - but this means a square-root call for every edge - which I'd like to avoid.(Will post as an answer, even though I'm not entirely satisfied with it).
Note, I'm aware of this questions similarity with:What is the fastest way to find the "visual" center of an irregularly shaped polygon?
However having to handle convex polygons increases the complexity of the problem significantly.
The points of the polygon can be weighted by their edge length which compensates for un-even point distribution.
This works for convex polygons too but in that case the center point isn't guaranteed to be inside the polygon.
Psudo-code:
def poly_center(poly):
sum_center = (0, 0)
sum_weight = 0.0
for point in poly:
weight = ((point - point.next).length +
(point - point.prev).length)
sum_center += point * weight
sum_weight += weight
return sum_center / sum_weight
Note, we can pre-calculate all edge lengths to halve the number of length calculations, or reuse the previous edge-length for half+1 length calculations. This is just written as an example to show the logic.
Including this answer for completeness since its the best method I've found so far.
There is no much better way than the accumulation of coordinates weighted by the edge length, which indeed takes N square roots.
If you accept an approximation, it is possible to skip some of the vertices by curve simplification, as follows:
decide of a deviation tolerance;
start from vertex 0 and jump to vertex M (say M=N/2);
check if the deviation along the polyline from 0 to M exceeds the tolerance (for this, compute the height of the triangle formed by the vertices 0, M/2, M);
if the deviation is exceeded, repeat recursively with 0, M/4, M/2 and M/2, 3M/4, M;
if the deviation is not exceeded, assume that the shape is straight between 0 and M.
continue until the end of the polygon.
Where the points are dense (like the left edge on your example), you should get some speedup.
I think its easiest to do something with the center of masses of the delaunay triangulation of the polygon points. i.e.
def _centroid_poly(poly):
T = spatial.Delaunay(poly).simplices
n = T.shape[0]
W = np.zeros(n)
C = 0
for m in range(n):
sp = poly[T[m,:],:]
W[m] = spatial.ConvexHull(sp).volume
C += W[m] +np.mean(sp, axis = 0)
return C / np.sum(W)
This works well for me!

finding value of a point between measured points on a 2D plane

I'm trying to find the best way to calculate this. On a 2D plane I have fixed points all with an instantaneous measurement value. The coordinates of these points is known. I want to predict the value of a movable point between these fixed points. The movable point coodinates will be known. So the distance betwwen the points is known as well.
This could be comparable to temperature readings or elevation on topography. I this case I'm wanting to predict ionospheric TEC of the mobile point from the fixed point measurements. The fixed point measurements are smoothed over time however I do not want to have to store previous values of the mobile point estimate in RAM.
Would some sort of gradient function be the way to go here?
This is the same algorithm for interpolating the height of a point from a triangle.
In your case you don't have z values for heights, but some other float value for each triangle vertex, but it's the same concept, still 3D points.
Where you have 3D triangle points p, q, r and test point pt, then pseudo code from the above mathgem is something like this:
Vector3 v1 = q - p;
Vector3 v2 = r - p;
Vector3 n = v1.CrossProduct(v2);
if n.z is not zero
return ((n.x * (pt.x - p.x) + n.y * (pt.y - p.y)) / -n.z) + p.z
As you indicate in your comment to #Phpdevpad, you do have 3 fixed points so this will work.
You can try contour plots especially contour lines. Simply use a delaunay triangulation of the points and a linear transformation along the edges. You can try my PHP implementations https://contourplot.codeplex.com for geographic maps. Another algorithm is conrec algorithm from Paul Bourke.

How to calculate points of Chord

I need to calculate a chord`s starting and ending point, now I have the starting point which lies on the circumfrence of the circle and I also have the angle between starting point and ending point, but I cannot seem to find a way to determine the end of point of chord as it should lie on the circumfrence , I also have the centre and radius of circle, the methods I have looked over the internet all give chord length. So i in short I need to find the other end of a chord when one point and the angle between both points is given, any idea of links would be appreciated
thanks
Imran
The arbitrary point on the circle with center (X0,Y0) and radius R has coordinates
x = Xo+R*cos(a)
y = Y0+R*sin(a), 0<=a<2*Pi
knowing X,Y,X0,Y0 and R you can easily find angle a:
a = acos((x-X0)/R) (may be + Pi depending on sign of the y-Y0).
Then you can calculate the angle for the second chord endpoint (you'll have two solutions actually) - a+angle and a-angle. Then put angle you got into circle equation and you'll get your required points coordinates.

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