closest point from one curve to another

Hi everybody,

I'm looking for a solution in GH (with or without VB) to get the closest point on a curve to another curve. Finally both curves are referenced from Rhino. Somehow I don't know how to do, but I imagine that there must be a solution. The only way I'm imagining it now is to iterate the t-value on both curves and always mesuring the distance from the points on the two curves to finally sort out the minimal distance. This would be a solution but just an approximative one.
I'd be very glad if someone would have a solution for that problem!

Thanks a lot!

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on May 7, 2010 at 4:02am

Hi Martin,

By using the Pull Point Component you can find the closest point on another item of geometry. The example I've shown below measures every point on one curve to the closest point on another then Sorts them and the point lists to get the least distance.

Note that by default the List Item is ZERO in GH v0.7

Permalink Reply by Martin Wyss on May 7, 2010 at 7:16am

Hi Danny,
thanks a lot for your definition!! It works perfectly!
I've just to figure out a way to make it work when I have multiple selection for one curve component... But I guess I'll manage to do that somehow with graft or something similar!

Thanks again!

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on May 7, 2010 at 7:28am

Do you want to find the closest point on every other curve or just the nearest curve?

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on May 7, 2010 at 8:08am

I've managed both scenarios so if you're having any problems give me a shout

Permalink Reply by Martin Wyss on May 7, 2010 at 8:10am

Wow you're quick I was just writing following while you made the next comment:

The aim is to get the closest points on a bunch of curves to a single curve. But I don't need any closest point within the bunch of curves. Like in this image:

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on May 7, 2010 at 8:27am

I'm a bit disappointed now :( but had fun coming up with the solution if you needed every curve's closest point to every other curve:

But for what you want you already hit the nail on the head pass the target curves through a graft component

Permalink Reply by Martin Wyss on May 7, 2010 at 9:03am

Thanks again! Actually only crafting the target curves wasn't working because there was a conflict in the sorting component. I solved the problem with a small VB component which generates a tree after the curve subdivision depending on the number of target curves.

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on May 7, 2010 at 9:27am

Interesting. I think the Pull Component has a bug in 0.6.0059 as it only outputs 1 path {0;0} (N=501) instead of 3 Paths in v0.7:

Permalink Reply by Martin Wyss on May 7, 2010 at 9:45am

Yeah that could be a reason. I've downgreaded again to version 0.6.0059 because my engine crashed in v0.7 at several points and I don't have the time to try to fix these problems as I'm doing this stuff for a university course (architecture) and we have a pin-up quite soon... :-)
So thanks again for your very quick help!!

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