Easy way to get the area area of a polygon?
Hi
Since a polygon is essentially made up of triangles I presume this is not
too hard. Anyone got a solution? I don't want to waste valuable time
reinventing the wheel.
Thanks
Ex.
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I can't provide verification of this particular program, but it purports to
do as you require:
http://codecanyon.net/item/3d-surface-area-calculator/10457510
http://codecanyon.net/item/3d-surface-area-calculator/10457510
At US$11.00 it would be a small gamble.
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Well, first you triangulate the polygon using the code posted to the recent
"Simple Polygon Triangulation" thread, then you add up the area of each
triangle?
On 11 April 2016 at 17:04, Experimentalist experimentalist@aaawesome.co.uk
wrote:
Hi
Since a polygon is essentially made up of triangles I presume this is not
too hard. Anyone got a solution? I don't want to waste valuable time
reinventing the wheel.
Thanks
Ex.
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It is absolutely NOT NECESSARY to triangulate in order to compute area. You can walk the perimeter and compute the area of the polygon. Google “Newman’s Scheme”, or directly apply either Green’s Theorem or Stokes’s Theorem, depending on your training.
That was the short, enigmatic answer (Google is your friend). The long answer is:
a) pick a point in the plane - any point. Call it O. [Hint: [0,0] works best]
b) for each edge in the polygon, construct the triangle O,v[i], v[i+1 mod n]
where n is the number of vertices and the numbering begins with 0
and the edge goes from v[i] to v[i+1 mod n]
c) compute the SIGNED area of this triangle and accumulate the sum of the SIGNED areas
d) the total SIGNED area will give the area of the polygon and the SIGN will tell you
if the polygon is correctly oriented.
A quick and dirty first implementation might stop here. To make it faster:
e) for extra credit, re-arrange the terms to eliminate O [that’s why I suggested that [0,0] works best]. You will arrive at a computation that looks something like:
AREA = 0.5 * SUM(v[i] CROSS v[i+1 mod n])
where:
the representation of the point v[i] is interpreted as a the representation of a
vector from O to v[i] (no, points and vectors are not the same, but SOME computations
can pretend that they are)
vertices are numbered 0..n-1
I have a beautiful proof-by-diagram of this, but it does not fit in ASCII format.
If you want to do Volumes, substitute triangular faces of the polyhedron for the edges of the polygon. Use the scalar triple product instead of cross product, and divide by 6 instead of 2.
Proof left as an exercise for the reader.
Green and Stokes showed that you can compute properties of the area by walking around the perimeter. Their followers proved that one follows from the other, and vice versa. Newman did the algebra and optimized the computation in the context of computer graphics.
Newman’s scheme dates to AT LEAST 1965. Green and Stokes were much earlier.
--
Kenneth Sloan
KennethRSloan@gmail.com mailto:KennethRSloan@gmail.com
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
On Apr 11, 2016, at 21:41 , doug moen doug@moens.org wrote:
Well, first you triangulate the polygon using the code posted to the recent "Simple Polygon Triangulation" thread, then you add up the area of each triangle?
On 11 April 2016 at 17:04, Experimentalist <experimentalist@aaawesome.co.uk mailto:experimentalist@aaawesome.co.uk> wrote:
Hi
Since a polygon is essentially made up of triangles I presume this is not
too hard. Anyone got a solution? I don't want to waste valuable time
reinventing the wheel.
Thanks
Ex.
--
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Nice solution! If I undertand it well the AREA evaluated by the expression
in e) is a vector. And the scalar area will be its norm.
2016-04-12 0:01 GMT-03:00 Kenneth Sloan kennethrsloan@gmail.com:
It is absolutely NOT NECESSARY to triangulate in order to compute area.
You can walk the perimeter and compute the area of the polygon. Google
“Newman’s Scheme”, or directly apply either Green’s Theorem or Stokes’s
Theorem, depending on your training.
That was the short, enigmatic answer (Google is your friend). The long
answer is:
a) pick a point in the plane - any point. Call it O. [Hint: [0,0] works
best]
b) for each edge in the polygon, construct the triangle O,v[i], v[i+1 mod
n]
where n is the number of vertices and the numbering begins with 0
and the edge goes from v[i] to v[i+1 mod n]
c) compute the SIGNED area of this triangle and accumulate the sum of the
SIGNED areas
d) the total SIGNED area will give the area of the polygon and the SIGN
will tell you
if the polygon is correctly oriented.
A quick and dirty first implementation might stop here. To make it faster:
e) for extra credit, re-arrange the terms to eliminate O [that’s why I
suggested that [0,0] works best]. You will arrive at a computation that
looks something like:
AREA = 0.5 * SUM(v[i] CROSS v[i+1 mod n])
where:
the representation of the point v[i] is interpreted as a the
representation of a
vector from O to v[i] (no, points and vectors are not the same, but
SOME computations
can pretend that they are)
vertices are numbered 0..n-1
I have a beautiful proof-by-diagram of this, but it does not fit in ASCII
format.
If you want to do Volumes, substitute triangular faces of the polyhedron
for the edges of the polygon. Use the scalar triple product instead of
cross product, and divide by 6 instead of 2.
Proof left as an exercise for the reader.
Green and Stokes showed that you can compute properties of the area by
walking around the perimeter. Their followers proved that one follows
from the other, and vice versa. Newman did the algebra and optimized the
computation in the context of computer graphics.
Newman’s scheme dates to AT LEAST 1965. Green and Stokes were much
earlier.
--
Kenneth Sloan
KennethRSloan@gmail.com
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
On Apr 11, 2016, at 21:41 , doug moen doug@moens.org wrote:
Well, first you triangulate the polygon using the code posted to the
recent "Simple Polygon Triangulation" thread, then you add up the area of
each triangle?
On 11 April 2016 at 17:04, Experimentalist <
experimentalist@aaawesome.co.uk> wrote:
Hi
Since a polygon is essentially made up of triangles I presume this is not
too hard. Anyone got a solution? I don't want to waste valuable time
reinventing the wheel.
Thanks
Ex.
--
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If the polygon is in a 2D plane, then the cross product produces a scalar. (At least, that’s the lie they teach to engineers; you may prefer to think of it as a vector in the z direction). If the polygon lies in 3-space (but, one hopes, is planar), then, yes - the cross product produces a vector.
The cross-product of two 3D vectors is a vector which has a length twice the area of the triangle defined by the two input vectors. The direction of the cross product is the surface normal.
The accumulated sums of all the cross-products produced by creating triangles from O and the successive vertices of the polygon is thus a vector with a length twice the area of the polygon (if the polygon is planar) and a direction perpendicular to the plane.
For extra credit: what is the interpretation of the length and direction of the computed vector when the vertices of the “polygon” do not lie in a plane?
Answer (I’m not cruel…): the direction is perpendicular to a “best-fit” plane through the wrinkled “polygon”, and the length is twice the area of the projection of the “polygon” onto that best-fit plane.
So…if you have wrinkled polygons and you want the area of the wrinkled surface…then you do have to triangulate. Question: in this case, is the answer unique?
--
Kenneth Sloan
KennethRSloan@gmail.com mailto:KennethRSloan@gmail.com
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
On Apr 11, 2016, at 23:30 , Ronaldo Persiano rcmpersiano@gmail.com wrote:
Nice solution! If I undertand it well the AREA evaluated by the expression in e) is a vector. And the scalar area will be its norm.
2016-04-12 0:01 GMT-03:00 Kenneth Sloan <kennethrsloan@gmail.com mailto:kennethrsloan@gmail.com>:
It is absolutely NOT NECESSARY to triangulate in order to compute area. You can walk the perimeter and compute the area of the polygon. Google “Newman’s Scheme”, or directly apply either Green’s Theorem or Stokes’s Theorem, depending on your training.
That was the short, enigmatic answer (Google is your friend). The long answer is:
a) pick a point in the plane - any point. Call it O. [Hint: [0,0] works best]
b) for each edge in the polygon, construct the triangle O,v[i], v[i+1 mod n]
where n is the number of vertices and the numbering begins with 0
and the edge goes from v[i] to v[i+1 mod n]
c) compute the SIGNED area of this triangle and accumulate the sum of the SIGNED areas
d) the total SIGNED area will give the area of the polygon and the SIGN will tell you
if the polygon is correctly oriented.
A quick and dirty first implementation might stop here. To make it faster:
e) for extra credit, re-arrange the terms to eliminate O [that’s why I suggested that [0,0] works best]. You will arrive at a computation that looks something like:
AREA = 0.5 * SUM(v[i] CROSS v[i+1 mod n])
where:
the representation of the point v[i] is interpreted as a the representation of a
vector from O to v[i] (no, points and vectors are not the same, but SOME computations
can pretend that they are)
vertices are numbered 0..n-1
I have a beautiful proof-by-diagram of this, but it does not fit in ASCII format.
If you want to do Volumes, substitute triangular faces of the polyhedron for the edges of the polygon. Use the scalar triple product instead of cross product, and divide by 6 instead of 2.
Proof left as an exercise for the reader.
Green and Stokes showed that you can compute properties of the area by walking around the perimeter. Their followers proved that one follows from the other, and vice versa. Newman did the algebra and optimized the computation in the context of computer graphics.
Newman’s scheme dates to AT LEAST 1965. Green and Stokes were much earlier.
--
Kenneth Sloan
KennethRSloan@gmail.com mailto:KennethRSloan@gmail.com
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
On Apr 11, 2016, at 21:41 , doug moen <doug@moens.org mailto:doug@moens.org> wrote:
Well, first you triangulate the polygon using the code posted to the recent "Simple Polygon Triangulation" thread, then you add up the area of each triangle?
On 11 April 2016 at 17:04, Experimentalist <experimentalist@aaawesome.co.uk mailto:experimentalist@aaawesome.co.uk> wrote:
Hi
Since a polygon is essentially made up of triangles I presume this is not
too hard. Anyone got a solution? I don't want to waste valuable time
reinventing the wheel.
Thanks
Ex.
--
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It should be noted that all this is true for simple polygons.
function area(p) = abs( sum_list( [ for(i=[0:len(p)-1]) cross2D( p[i],
p[(i+1)%len(p)] ) ] ) )/2;
function sum_list(v, i=0, sum=0) = i==len(v) ? sum : sum_list(v, i+1,
sum+v[i] );
function cross2D(p, q) = p[0]*q[1] - p[1]*q[0];
p = 10*[ [1,0], [2,0], [2,1], [1,1] ];
q = 10*[ [1,20], [2,21], [2,20], [1,21] ];
polygon(p);
polygon(q);
echo(area_p=area(p));
echo(area_q=area(q));
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There’s also the example that comes with OpenSCAD: https://github.com/openscad/openscad/blob/master/examples/Functions/polygon_areas.scad
-Marius
Thanks, Kenneth. I translated your algorithm into this:
function area(vs) =
let (n = len(vs))
abs(0.5 * sum([for (i=[0:n-1]) cross(vs[i], vs[(i+1)%n])]));
function sum(v,i=0) =
i < len(v) ? v[i] + sum(v,i+1) : 0;
I used abs() to convert the signed area into an absolute value, since the
polygon() module doesn't care about the winding order of the vertices.
This turns out to be the same as Marius's solution, except that it returns
an absolute value, and also, the division by 2 happens at the end, instead
of once for each vertex.
I ran some tests, and it mostly works as expected. Degenerate polygons work
(area==0).
Self-intersecting polygons do not work, which is inconsistent with the
polygon() primitive. So the area won't match what polygon() draws on the
screen in this case.
Here's that last test case:
//self intersecting quad
weird = [
[0,0],
[0,1],
[1,0],
[1,1],
];
echo(area(weird)); // 0
polygon(weird);
On 11 April 2016 at 23:01, Kenneth Sloan kennethrsloan@gmail.com wrote:
It is absolutely NOT NECESSARY to triangulate in order to compute area.
You can walk the perimeter and compute the area of the polygon. Google
“Newman’s Scheme”, or directly apply either Green’s Theorem or Stokes’s
Theorem, depending on your training.
That was the short, enigmatic answer (Google is your friend). The long
answer is:
a) pick a point in the plane - any point. Call it O. [Hint: [0,0] works
best]
b) for each edge in the polygon, construct the triangle O,v[i], v[i+1 mod
n]
where n is the number of vertices and the numbering begins with 0
and the edge goes from v[i] to v[i+1 mod n]
c) compute the SIGNED area of this triangle and accumulate the sum of the
SIGNED areas
d) the total SIGNED area will give the area of the polygon and the SIGN
will tell you
if the polygon is correctly oriented.
A quick and dirty first implementation might stop here. To make it faster:
e) for extra credit, re-arrange the terms to eliminate O [that’s why I
suggested that [0,0] works best]. You will arrive at a computation that
looks something like:
AREA = 0.5 * SUM(v[i] CROSS v[i+1 mod n])
where:
the representation of the point v[i] is interpreted as a the
representation of a
vector from O to v[i] (no, points and vectors are not the same, but
SOME computations
can pretend that they are)
vertices are numbered 0..n-1
I have a beautiful proof-by-diagram of this, but it does not fit in ASCII
format.
If you want to do Volumes, substitute triangular faces of the polyhedron
for the edges of the polygon. Use the scalar triple product instead of
cross product, and divide by 6 instead of 2.
Proof left as an exercise for the reader.
Green and Stokes showed that you can compute properties of the area by
walking around the perimeter. Their followers proved that one follows
from the other, and vice versa. Newman did the algebra and optimized the
computation in the context of computer graphics.
Newman’s scheme dates to AT LEAST 1965. Green and Stokes were much
earlier.
--
Kenneth Sloan
KennethRSloan@gmail.com
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
On Apr 11, 2016, at 21:41 , doug moen doug@moens.org wrote:
Well, first you triangulate the polygon using the code posted to the
recent "Simple Polygon Triangulation" thread, then you add up the area of
each triangle?
On 11 April 2016 at 17:04, Experimentalist <
experimentalist@aaawesome.co.uk> wrote:
Hi
Since a polygon is essentially made up of triangles I presume this is not
too hard. Anyone got a solution? I don't want to waste valuable time
reinventing the wheel.
Thanks
Ex.
--
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http://forum.openscad.org/Easy-way-to-get-the-area-area-of-a-polygon-tp17045.html
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doug.moen wrote
Self-intersecting polygons do not work, which is inconsistent with the
polygon() primitive. So the area won't match what polygon() draws on the
screen in this case.
To calculate area or even to fill a self-intersecting polygons is ambiguous.
The drawing of a self-intersecting polygon done by primitive polygon() is
just one of the alternatives. Consider an extrusion of the polygon:
p = [ [0,0], [7,0], [7,7], [3,7], [3,3], [10,3], [10,10], [0,10] ];
polygon(p);
which has a hole in it. If you process that extrusion with slic3r and
Simplify3D you will get rather different results. Each one choose its own
interpretation of the hole of polygon(). Slic3r does preserve the hole,
Simplify3D fill it. And nobody can argue that one of them is wrong.
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