distance from point to spline

[chief]

Any one know a good code in order to compute the near point in a spline to a given point?
Thanks in advance

[V-man]

mmm... perhaps finding the closest point on the polyline hull will work or give a reasonably close result in some cases.

Ask in a comp.algorithms group

V-man

[martin_marinov]

Hi,

Please see my reply in this thread: http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubb/Forum3/HTML/002519.html
it gives the basic way to find an exact solution of the problem. It is usually faster than the approximation approach.

Regards
Martin

[martin_marinov]

Hi,

Sorry, you actually asked for a solution in the general spline case. So for it you can use the fact that the spline is a polynomial between every two succesive control points/knots. Then you use the numerical method described in the thread which I mentioned above.
If the used basis are the BSplines, then finding this polynomial is usually trivial - depending of the spline order. In case you use dont use compact functions basis, it is a bit harder...

Regards
Martin



[This message has been edited by martin_marinov (edited 10-29-2002).]